In a method of synthesizing components to design a system meeting an exergy loss target value, one or more candidate sets of components are synthesized and an exergy loss value for each of the one or more candidate sets of components are calculated. A determination as to whether at least one of the candidate set of components meets the exergy loss target value is made and at least one candidate set of components determined to meet the exergy loss target value is identified as the set of components for use in the design of the system.