ECOS is the name of a series of international conferences that focus on modern aspects of Thermal Sciences with particular emphasis on Thermodynamics and its applications in energy conversion systems and processes.
The idea for the ECOS series of conferences originated at the meeting of the Systems Analysis Technical Committee (SATC) of the Advanced Energy Systems Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) during the 1985 ASME Winter Annual Meeting, in Florida. At the meeting it was decided to:
• organize an annual Symposium on the Analysis and Design of Thermal Systems at each ASME WAM and
• try to involve more scientists and engineers from outside the United States by organizing conferences in other countries, except the United States.
Indeed, a Symposium of 8-15 sessions has been organized by the SATC every year since 1985 at the ASME Winter Annual Meeting and its successor, the International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition. The first overseas conference took place in Rome, in 1987, with the support of the U.S. National Science Foundation. The name ECOS, coined by George Tsatsaronis, was used for the first time in Zaragoza, in 1992. This is the third time that the ECOS conference is taking place in Greece after Athens in 1991 and Crete in 2006.
THE ECOS CONFERENCES: A SHORT HISTORY FROM A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE
George Tsatsaronis
In the early 1980s, Richard Gaggioli, organized a series of international conferences, symposia, and meetings on the exergy topic. I first met him at such a conference in Detroit in 1981 (I was still working in Aachen, at that time). During a very successful Symposium organized by Richard during the 1985 Winter Annual Meeting (WAM) of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) in Miami, USA, I mentioned to him that many colleagues in Europe cannot participate in these meetings because the cost of travel to the US was relatively high. Richard’s immediate reaction was “then we will organize an overseas conference”. Later the same day, in the meeting of the Systems Analysis Technical Committee (SATC), which was chaired by Richard and attended by very few people (contrary to the unusually large number of participants in the symposium), he announced that we should organize an overseas conference in the next years. This term was used from the very beginning within ASME, the SATC of which was initially responsible for the organization of each conference. This is how the idea for the series of conferences, which we now call “ECOS Conferences”, was born. Subsequently, Richard Gaggioli, Mike Moran (who received a National Science Foundation grant to support the travel expenses of 10 participants from the US), and Enrico Sciubba (the local organizer) organized the first overseas conference in Rome, Italy in 1987, where we had the first fierce debates about nomenclature in exergy. The second conference had limited attendance because it unfortunately coincided with the Tiananmen Square events of 1989.
In the years 1990 and 1994, Sergio Stecco organized two very successful conferences in Florence, Italy. To avoid competition, and at Sergio’s request, the SATC decided not to organize any “overseas conferences” in the same years and to support the corresponding conferences in Florence. When organizing the ECOS 2002 in Berlin, I decided to number this series of “overseas conferences” and, in order to demonstrate continuity, I also included the two conferences in Florence, although, strictly speaking, they did not belong to the series of overseas conferences then organized by SATC.
The first time the scientific committee of this series of conferences was involved in the planning of these conferences (in parallel with the SATC) was in the 1991 meeting in Athens. The suggestion came from our Polish colleagues Zygmunt Kolenda, Jan Szargut and Andrzej Ziebik, who should organize the conference in 1993 and suggested a wider and more democratic basis for future decisions. This is how the solidarity democratic movement in Poland left its mark on the series of ECOS conferences.
The name ECOS was coined by the author in the year 1991 and was used for the first time at the conference in Zaragoza in 1992. In my fax to Antonio Valero, the ECOS 1992 organizer, proposing this name, I mentioned that
• the acronym (Efficiency, Costs, Optimization, and Simulation) covers the large majority of topics this series of conferences was dealing with at that time,
• the environmental impact is implied by the name itself (ecosystems), and
• the name ECOS means home in Greek.
I am very happy indeed that “many participants have found in this series of conferences an appropriate home for discussing their ideas and work progress”, as I wrote on the web page of ECOS 2002, something that is as true today, as it was then. The Environmental Impact was included from the very beginning in the name of this series of conferences, but was left out of the official title only the first conference in Zaragoza, to keep it shorter.
Unfortunately, not all subsequent conferences adopted the name ECOS (e.g., in 1993 and 1997).
At the end of the 1990s, since there were no volunteers, it was not always easy to find future organizers of the conference. Mike Moran and I, who developed the initiative of identifying and assisting the future organizers, were very grateful to Michel Feidt and Masaru Ishida for agreeing to organize the conferences in the years 1998 and 1999, in Nancy, France and Tokyo, Japan, respectively.
In the conference of the year 2002, which the author organized in Berlin, for the first time:
• this series of conferences was numbered (the numbering starts with the 15th conference),
• a web page for the conference was developed and presented, and
• a short history of the ECOS Conferences was published. This history was repeated in the web pages of several of the following conferences.
The topics covered initially in the series of overseas conferences were theoretical and applied aspects of thermodynamics, exergy analysis and exergoeconomics. The emphasis was mainly on methods. With time there was a gradual shift to many other aspects of thermal and, particularly, environmental engineering and to various energy conversion systems instead of evaluation and optimization methods.
On the organizational side, initially all decisions related to the overseas conferences were taken at the SATC meetings. With time, and since every year fewer SATC members were participating at these overseas conferences (perhaps for the same reasons the Europeans could not participate at the ASME meetings), the power for important decisions was transferred to the scientific committee. The scientific committee was appointed every time independently by the organizers of each new conference. These persons had absolute freedom in deciding about all aspects of “their” conference, something that the author always appreciated. After the establishment of the ECOS International Society, Inc. last year, some rules were introduced limiting this freedom of the organizers. Thus, we should expect more uniformity in the next ECOS Conferences.
Several of the early conferences were organized “in participation with ASME” (through the SATC), carried the ASME logo and used the ASME forms for paper evaluation. Since more work was necessary every year for obtaining permission to use this logo from an organization that was becoming increasingly more bureaucratic, this practice was abandoned during the first decade of this century. Around the turn of the century, few conferences were also organized “in participation with the Centre of Applied Thermodynamics”, which was active in those years.
Up to this year, this series of conferences was organized 6 times in Italy (1987, 1990, 1994, 2007, 2012, and 2021), 3 times in China (1989, 1997, and 2013), Greece (1991, 2006, and 2024), and Poland (1993, 2008, and 2019), twice in Denmark (2003, and 2022), France (1998, and 2015), Japan (1999, and 2020), Spain (1992, and 2023), and Turkey (1995, and 2001), and once in Brazil (2009), Finland (2014), Germany (2002), Mexico (2004), The Netherlands (2000), Norway (2005), Portugal (2018), Serbia (2011), Slovenia (2016), Sweden (1996), Switzerland (2010), and USA (2017).
Individuals deserving to be mentioned for their significant contributions to the development of the ECOS Conferences, particularly in the first years, include (in alphabetical order) Özer Arnas, Richard Gaggioli, Michael Moran, Enrico Sciubba, Sergio Stecco, and Antonio Valero. Our sincere appreciation goes to each organizer of a single Conference for their invaluable contributions to this conference series.
Finally a personal note: Since 1985 (i.e., in the last 40 years including the years of pandemic), the author has participated in all but 4 ECOS Conferences and in all but 3 ASME Winter Annual Meetings (1985- 2000) and, in their successor International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Expositions (ASME-IMECE), always including the corresponding annual symposia (and meetings) organized by the SATC.
