You will find in these pages the book's online resources.

We have developed over the past thirty five years a new way of teaching thermodynamics applied to energy conversion now used in more than one hundred and twenty higher education institutions, at both undergraduate and graduate levels (engineering schools, universities) as well as in vocational training.

The change in the education paradigm we have introduced is based on a shift of knowledge acquired by students. The writing of equations describing changes undergone by fluids is drastically reduced, the calculations being performed by a simulator such as Thermoptim (www.thermoptim.org) without learners needing to know the details. They devote most of the time on the one hand learning technologies, and secondly reflecting on the architecture of both conventional and innovative thermodynamic cycles, graphically building and setting models of various energy systems instead of theoretical cycles caricaturally simplified in order to be analytically calculable.

The new teaching method has the distinction of being at the same time much simpler than conventional approaches for the introduction to the discipline, and much more powerful for confirmed students who can go further in their studies thanks to a strong and open modeling environment. They can work on real-world complex innovative cycles currently being studied in laboratories and companies.

We published in 2011 a book entitled “Energy Systems, a new approach to engineering thermodynamics”, which had a double objective: on the one hand to allow beginners to understand the design principles of energy systems and to have an overall vision of the different technologies usable for their realization, and on the other hand to provide its confirmed readers with advanced methods of analysis of these systems. It showed how a structured approach to studying energy technologies can be implemented using the Thermoptim software package.

This first book is approximately 1,100 pages and, despite the simplifications made by the proposed approach, it can be a bit difficult for a number of readers.

The present book, while following the same global logic as the 2011 book, does not go as much in the details. In order to simplify the content, sections that were intended for advanced readers have been removed and theoretical developments have been limited to the essential.

This is a 564-page book, roughly half the volume of the first English-language edition.

As indicated by its title, this book deals with energy systems, i.e. energy conversion technologies (ECTs) considered as systems based on sets of elementary components coupled together. Although it mainly addresses thermodynamic energy conversion, it covers a very large field, including a variety of cycles:

• conventional as well as innovative steam power plants

• gas turbines

• reciprocating engines

• Stirling engines

• combined cycles

• cogeneration

• refrigeration cycles

• air conditioning

• absorption

• new and renewable energy conversion

• Generation I to IV nuclear energy conversion

• evaporation

• desalination

• oxycombustion

• fuel cells