Book excerpt: Optimizing Thermal, Chemical and Environmental Systems treats the evaluation of power or energy limits for processes that arise in various thermal, chemical and environmental engineering systems (heat and mass exchangers, power converters, recovery units, solar collectors, mixture separators, chemical reactors, catalyst regenerators, etc.). The book is an indispensable source for researchers and students, providing the necessary information on what has been achieved to date in the field of process optimization, new research problems, and what kind of further studies should be developed within quite specialized optimizations. - Summarizes recent achievements of advanced optimization techniques - Links exergy definitions in reversible systems with classical problems of extremum work - Includes practical problems and illustrative examples to clarify applications - Provides a unified description of classical and work-assisted heat and mass exchangers - Written by a first-class expert in the field of advanced methods in thermodynamics