Unambiguous Entropic Evaluation of the Efficiency of Complicated Technologies of Complex Processing of Natural Resources

Abstract

State-of-the-art processing of natural resources is characterized by constantly increasing volumes of mining industry. On the one hand, it leads to the involvement of ever growing volumes of depleted natural resources into industry, since rich sources have been practically exhausted. On the other hand, ecological requirements to the processing industry are ever growing. These two circumstances make it necessary to advance processing technologies for maximal usage of all valuable components of natural raw materials. As an example of such enterprises, we can mention the processing of multicomponent ores of nonferrous metals or the production of various mineral materials and even metal materials from the Dead Sea water. It is impossible as yet to evaluate unambiguously the total efficiency of such combined industries. This makes it difficult to manage and optimize them. Such situation requires the development of a method allowing an unambiguous estimation of the completeness of complex usage of raw materials at all stages of the technology, which is sometimes rather branched. The proposed criterion of such kind is based on the properties of entropy, which is the principal invariant of modern natural science. This parameter is perceived ambiguously and is permanently discussed in technical literature. Physical nature of this parameter is substantiated in detail by the author in [1] [2] [3], where its universality for the analysis of complicated systems during their variation is demonstrated. In the present paper, the development of such a criterion for a complicated technology of complex raw material processing is considered. However, such an approach can be also used for the analysis of complicated technological projects in other fields of human activities. This article represents a continuation of the author’s developments [1].