Our everyday experiences teach us that any imbalance like temperature gradients, non-uniform particle-densities etc. will approach some equilibrium state if not subjected to any external force. Phenomenological descriptions of these empirical findings reach back to the 19th century where Fourier and Fick presented descriptions of relaxation for macroscopic systems by stochastic approaches. However, one of the main goals of thermodynamics remained the derivation of these phenomenological description from basic microscopic principles. This task has gained much attraction since the foundation of quantum mechanics about 100 years ago. However, up to now no such conclusive derivation is presented. In this dissertation we will investigate whether closed quantum systems may show equilibration, and if so, to what extend such dynamics are in accordance with standard thermodynamic behavior as described by stochastic approaches. To this end we consider i.a. Markovian dynamics, Fokker-Planck and diffusion equations. Furthermore, we consider fluctuation theorems as given e.g. by the Jarzynski relation beyond strict Gibbsian initial states. After all we find indeed good agreement for selected quantum systems.

The work at hand presents a novel approach to transport in closed quantum systems. To this end a method is introduced which is essentially based on projection operator techniques, in particular on the time-convolutionless (TCL) technique. The projection onto local densities of quantities such as energy, magnetization, particles, etc. yields the reduced dynamics of the respective quantities in terms of a systematic perturbation expansion. Especially, the lowest order contribution of this expansion is used as a strategy for the analysis of transport in "modular" quantum systems. The term modular basically corresponds to (quasi-) one-dimensional structures consisting of identical or at least similar many-level subunits. Modular quantum systems are demonstrated to represent many physical situations and several examples are given. In the context of these quantum systems lowest order TCL is shown as an efficient tool which also allows to investigate the dependence of transport on the considered length scale. In addition an estimation for the validity range of lowest order TCL is derived. As a first application a "design" model is considered for which a complete characterization of all available transport types as well as the transitions to each other is possible. For this model the relationship to quantum chaos and the validity of the Kubo formula is further discussed. As an example for a "real" system the Anderson model is finally analyzed. The results are partially verified by the numerical solution of the full time-dependent Schroedinger equation which is obtained by exact diagonalization or approximative integrators.