This paper proposes an approach to calculate the efficiency of throttling in which the exergy (available energy) is used to evaluate the energy conversion processes. In the exergy calculation for real gases, a difficult part of integration can be removed by judiciously advised thermodynamic paths; the compressibility factor is calculated by using Peng-Robinson (P-R) equation. It is found that the largest deviation between the exergies calculated by the real gas equation and ideal gas assumption is about 1%. Because the exergy is a function of the pressure and temperature, the Joule-Thomson coefficients are used to calculate the temperature changes of throttling, based on the compressibility factors of the Soave-Redlich-Kwong (S-R-K) and P-R equations, and the temperature decreases are compared with those calculated by empirical formula. The result shows that the heat exergy contributes very little in throttling. The simple equation of ideal gas is suggested to calculate the efficiency of throttling for air at atmospheric temperatures. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.