Conventional forced air heating of a greenhouse

Infrared (IR) heating of a greenhouse
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The arrows have a fancy 3D effect. No quanitative reference is given, but the article mentions that “the diagrams are qualitatively representative of the energy flow of systems utilizing burners”.

Flows in million tonnes (per year?). Scale element at the bottom left. No visible arrow direction, but instead a blue to green gradient on each band (blue for export, green for import). Middle East region being the lasrgest exporter remains a problem with a very wide Sankey arrow leaving through the Indian Ocean.

(Stenvall Skoeld & Company via ChartPorn)

This is a fine sample of a Sankey diagram that merits some more explanation:
In fact, these are two combined Sankey diagrams. The overall sum of 10,000 RMB income breaks down to some 25% taxes, 19% savings and 56% spendings (consumption). The Sankey arrow representing the disposable income is then zoomed to allow for more detail to be seen. Hence the Sankey arrows in the left part of the diagram are not the same scale as the ones on the right. The arrows branching out to the top are considered “necessities”, while the one that go downwards represent “discretionary spendings”. Circles at the end of the arrow show the amount in Chinese currency. As the author points out, “this example is from one of the respondents and not an average of all respondents.”

Rufer writes: “I found this rather unusual Sankey diagram in a German soccer magazine called 11Freunde (11Friends). It visualizes the career of French international Nicolas Anelka in terms of transfer and lending fees. He started in the youth team of Paris Saint-Germain, changed to their first team in 1995 and got sold to Arsenal for 750’000 € (left side of the Sankey diagram). From there he made his way through Europe, sometimes for incredible transfer fees of about 35 million €. Now, as a rather old player, he earns his money in China.”

The legend also has grey arrows, when Anelka was “on loan” to another club. The change to his current club was without tranfer fee (different blue).

In the first version the economy maps covered 24 major sector groups, and were apparently “static”. However, they already were beautifully designed Sankey-style maps of the environmental impacts caused directly or indirectly by these sectors of the economy.

Here is an image from that first edition of Economy Maps:

Jason comments: “The CEDA database (from which Economy Map derives its data) was developed by Dr Sangwon Suh at UC Santa Barbara, and that image … was actually an illustration for an academic article by Dr Suh.”

Development has continued and today in Economy Maps 2.0 beta is available as a fully interactive browser based Java application or a downloadable file for Mac or Win. It allows to view the environmental impact for several categories (such as global warming protential, ozone depletion, acidification, land use, freshwater aquatic exotoxicity potential and so on). Each diagram is presented in a different color but with the same structure: The first column are the goods obtained from the different sectors. The middle column contains all sectors that have an exchange of goods. The right column represents the consumers, both private and governmental. For each impact category users can visually grasp the relative contribution of each sector to an environmental impact category represented by the width of the band. Each sector is profiled according to three distinct perspectives on environmental impact as explained in yesterday’s post.

I have included a video of Jason explaining the economy maps below, it is wortwhile watching to fully understand the details.

The diagrams are based on statistical financial data and makes use of the economic input-output life cycle assessment (EIOLCA) method. “Financial data are drawn from ‘use’ tables published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) at the US Department of Commerce. Environmental data are drawn from Sustainable Materials Management: The Road Ahead, a report from the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA). The report includes an economy-wide study that identifies the relative contribution of each industrial sector to major environmental categories. The study makes use of output from the CEDA 3.0 Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Economic Input/Output (EIO) database”.

It should be noted that there are a lot of assumptions built into the methodologies used to calculate environmental impacts, and some of these methodologies are quite controversial. Also, the data is from 1997, and financial interaction between the sectors has most likely changed since. According to the author, Economy Maps at present should be considered a prototype, and users “should be careful in relying on Economy Maps for ‘answers’ at this point…”

Users can pull the nodes of the middle column apart and sort them in order to untangle the spaghetti and get a clearer picture of the economic interactions between the sectors and their associated direct and indirect environmental impacts in the different categories. The height of the economy sector node represents the magnitude of the environmental impact, the font size of the node name corresponds to the node size. The nodes move with a nice soft scroll effect as we love it. Try the online version of Economy Maps 2.0 or download the desktop version.

Economy Maps are “work in progress” and we can expect updates as data for more recent years become available.

Here is the 60 second video of Jason explaining the Economy Maps. For a longer video visit economymap.org.

The above supply chain is displayed with its land use change impact (such as transformation of forest to pasture). The unit is million square metres per year. The scale is shown on the left and the nodes are stacked on the bottom zero line. Hence the height of the node indicates the magnitude of land use change (in Mio m²) caused by this particular segment’s activities. Additionally the nodes have a flat side on the right, for the percentage of their activities that are directly delivered to consumers or government, and an arrow shaped exit when the services are delivered to another sector of the economy.
On the left edge the flat bottom segment indicates the environmental impact caused directly by the activities of this segment, while the connected arrow represents the environmental impacts caused by this segments activities in other sectors across the economy. The grey bands at the top and at the bottom represent all other sectors of the U.S. economy.

So we have three persepctives with in one Sankey diagram: direct sector impacts, indirect (or intermediate) impacts, and final consumption impacts.

This is a fascinating concept, which is used by Pearson to create an overall map of the U.S. economy, or, to be more precise, maps of environmental impacts caused directly or indirectly across the nation by industrial activities. These so-called “Economy Maps” are featured in my next blog post.

In the meantime, please watch Jason’s explanation on the ‘Three Perspectives of the Economy Map’:

The first Sankey diagram shows transports to New York (excluding the Northeastern States and transports within NY). The food supplied by other US states becomes relatively insignificant:

The second one includes food transports within NY state (still excluding the Northeastern States):

John, however has not been satisified with the results of his work. He writes (scroll down to his September 21, 2011 notes):

“Neither produced effective graphics, but what they did demonstrate was the inability of the information to be able to represent food going to New York. (…) As a result, the data “revealed” that we already have a very local food system, when in reality this is not the case; instead, it does indicate how many extra miles are traveled for food around the location of purchase. (…) The images below demonstrate just how disproportionate the amount of miles traveled in New York are to the miles traveled bring food to New York from the rest of the country.”

It remains unclear whether the flows displayed in the diagram are for payload (e.g tonnes of food) or payload distance (e.g. tonne-kilometres). Also, it is not mentioned, whether, for example, water and drinks (typically sourced locally) are included.

I think the idea of thie Sankey map overlay is great, but the issue of spatial representation of (dense) data points has not been adequately adressed. A zoomed NY state would maybe help.

Source: http://www.cyclifier.org/project/foodbank (License: Share-Alike)

The image is explained as follows:

“Processes and actors are identified by labeled platforms with sub-processes shown as stacked platforms. The system boundary is shown as an extruded block indicating that it is one piece within a larger network. Starting from the edges of the cyclifier, distances are marked in intervals to indicate the distances traveled by inputs and outputs. Flows are scaled by mass as in sankey diagrams and are color-coded per flow type. Flows to and from the atmosphere are represented as traveling vertically.”

So, we have ‘Food and Organics’ flows (green), transport (yellow), users (purple) and even volunteer labor (brown) represented in the diagram. No numbers or units given though. Since cyclifier.org is interested in promoting “innovations that contribute to local exchange and production”, distances of producers to the foodbank and to the consumers are indicated on a somewhat logarithmic scale.

I just doubt that roughly a third of the output flows from food production is received by the foodbank. This is probaly to be taken symbolically and not for real…

Very cool Sankey diagram, kudos!

I’m hardly a hundred pages into reading, but I already love it. The book is very graphical (to say the least), well illustrated, with many graphs and photos, infographics and even historic images. Plus – and this is why it deserves to be presented here on the blog – it features a great number of Sankey diagrams.

I really enjoy the lego bricks in the steel making flow chart (pp. 121-127). You’re also going to love the ‘WhatsApp’-style chat between Henry Ford and the Wright Brothers (p. 181).

This book “faces up to the impacts of making materials in the 21st century. We’re already making materials well, but demand keeps growing and so we need to start using them well to.” (from the back cover)

Sustainable Materials with Open Eyes by Julian M. Allwood and Jonathan M. Cullen can obtained from Amazon and – I am pretty much sure – from your local book dealer. Here is the book’s website.

This is more of a schematic flow diagram, as it doesn’t show any quantities. The blue boxes are processing steps. Two nice recycling loops in there from the crystalization step back to the electrolysis and from the other crystalization step back to the refining. ‘Szlam’ seems to be sludge. The individual Sankey arrows don’t show an arrow head, but little gray arrows indicate the flow direction from top to bottom.

The whole Sankey just looks kind of odd, because the main product flow is not aligned vertically. But then again, that’s up to the designer. After all, it is a fine sample of a process flow Sankey diagram.

She writes: “Below is a “Sankey Diagram” inspired diagram of the networking between the extractors, distributors and users of energy, myself including, that I have described above.”

Now, who still says that we can’t do a Sankey diagram that shows the energy consumption caused by an individual?

Of course, the actual quantities are not shown in Kelseys diagram, but it would be safe to say that this image is more or less true for an average American, who has a car, lives in a house and uses industry products. As a rough estimate I would just divide the 98 quads (mentioned as the overall primary energy demand in the 2010 U.S. Energy Sankey diagram) by the roughly 308 Mio. citizens. The proportions of the Sankey arrows would most likely stay the same.

“From the body to the world” … every single one of us contributes to the big picture, and it is up to each of us to make this picture look different.

Download high res version of the Sankey diagram (large PDF) here.

This was prepared by Eric Shuster and is an update to the Sankey diagrams published annually by LLNL. It has the energy carriers on the left, energy conversion in the middle, and energy use sectors on the right. Primary energy consumption in the U.S. in 2010 is estimated to have amounted to 98 quads (quadrillion BTUs).

“NETL energy analysts have produced for the public a set of Sankey diagrams based on data obtained from the Annual Energy Review 2010 recently released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Graphically representing both quantity and direction, the diagrams place in perspective the relative contributions of major domestic energy sources as well as the flow of fossil fuels around the world.

The “Estimated U.S. Energy Use in 2010″ flow diagram shows the quantity of fuels used to drive each of the sectors in the United States. Overall, 83 percent of the primary energy consumed in the U.S. is from fossil fuels and downstream, due to conversion efficiencies, 89 percent of the total energy delivered to the end-used sectors is derived from fossil fuels.”

The news item also has a link to another presentation ny NETL featuring global coal and gas related flows as Sankey diagrams. These are interesting as will and I will present them here in the near future.

The diagram visualizes gaseous emissions (carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, oxygen, nitrogen, …) from different equipments (e.g. steam boiler, fermentation tank, flare, …) in 2004. Carbon dioxide emissions are given in absolute values as flow label. All flows in kilograms (Note: nitrogen quantity (‘Stickstoff’) probably erronously labeled ‘Mio kg’ in the legend).

Good job … Prost!

The first one is titled “Enthalpy Sankey Diagram”:

The second one is a “Exergy Sankey Diagram”:

Anybody care to explain more?
Looking at the choice of color one could be led to believe that enthalpy is female, while exergy is male.