Exergy as a unified measure of water quality

The concept of exergy has been applied to ecological evaluation, resource accounting and environmental impact assessment. As a suitable indicator for ecological evaluation, exergy analysis presents a unified thermodynamic measure of objective evaluation of resources and environment with exergetic unit. A case study of water quality assessment using exergy analysis is presented. Compared with other existing methods, exergy accounting provides a unitary and objective measure for water pollution as a result of the application of the thermodynamic concept to water quality assessment.