Sankey Diagrams

In a report on “Fuel and financial savings for operators of small fishing vessels” by J.D.K. Wilson from Maputo, Mozambique (available on the FAO website), the author explains that in a small slow-speed vessel, only approximately 35% of the energy created from the burning of fuel can actually be utilized to run the propeller, thus can be “spent on useful work such as pulling the net”.

I have “translated” the given values into a Sankey diagram, using the original image as a background layer. This works quite fine, apart from the very thin (1%) flow of friction losses.
On a side note: this is the first time I am presenting a right-to-left oriented Sankey diagram on this blog.

The author concludes, that energy can be saved on the engine and transmission, however the mode of operation (e.g. to reduce the effect of wave resistance), and hull maintenance. Read more interesting details.

The French architecture company AMEO is specialized in construction bioclimatique. The term is probably best translated as ‘bioclimatic building’ … but sound much more chic in French!

The houses they build are made from environmentally sound materials (mainly wood, and other materials such as and cellulose-based materials) where ever possible. Local micro-climate is taken into account, and passive solar energy is used for heating.

Used with permission of AMEO - Source: http://www.ameo-architecture.com

The company presents energy gains and losses and the advantages of the bioclimatic building to their customers using Sankey diagrams as the one shown above. Unfortunately two of the flows have no quantity indicator, and two of the quantity shown in the labels have probably been switched (see thin flow labeled 13779 kWh, but wide flow labeled 5850 kWh). However, I like this diagram for its simplicity.

The World Alliance for Decentralized Energy (WADE) runs a website on decentralized energy, called localpower.org. It has a strong educational element, and shows the benefits of producing energy locally, rather than in central power plants.

“Centralized power plants waste huge amounts of energy because their heat output cannot be used locally. Efficiency of the US electricity system, for example, is even lower today than in the early 20th century, and far below its potential.”

The Sankey diagram shown on the website (full size image) illustrates the losses of centralized power generation and is explained as follows:

The large red arrow represents energy from all fuels wasted in the form of waste heat. Capturing waste heat then clearly represents the largest source of potential for efficiency improvement. (…)
The smaller red arrows represent power consumed by the power plants themselves and the power lost during transmission and distribution respectively. The yellow arrows represent the actual useful energy derived from the original fuel inputs - about a third of the actual energy society should be aiming to use.

I won’t be going into the pros and cons of decentralized energy or centralized power, but rather highlight the good and the weak points of how Sankey diagrams are presented: This Sankey diagram doesn’t show any units, a fact that makes it susceptible to criticism. The insterstices in the green area on the left, meant to be separation lines, are somewhat strange (they make me think of an ancient Mayan comb), and do of course conflict with the idea of maintaining arrow width to scale. Lastly, the large arrow heads on the right side overdo the real width, underpinning the statement that a large portion of energy is being lost.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is funding research projects that target the increase of efficiency of car engine.

The Sankey diagram shown in this post on the Green Car Congress blog visualizes that only 25% (green arrow) of the energy from combustion is used as “effective power” for mobility and accessories, while 40% of the energy is lost in exhaust gas.

Projects are being carried out at John Deere, Caterpillar, Detroit Diesel and Mack Trucks, to name just a few.

“Seven of the twelve projects focus on advanced combustion technology with a heavy focus on HCCI (Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition). There is also an diesel-compressed-air hybrid truck powertrain under development. The remaining projects deal with technologies to convert waste heat from engines to electrical or mechanical energy.”

The inefficient energy use of car engines and other vehicles are the main reason for the transport sector being (next to energy generation and transmission) the sector where most energy is being lost (see this post).

Joshua Rosenau over at scienceblogs took up on the energy topic in his ‘Thoughts from Kansas‘ and presents a Sankey diagram for the U.S. energy distribution (The Problem of Energy Generation) from an article in Science (Whitesides and Crabtree: Don’t Forget Long-Term Fundamental Research in Energy, Science 9 February 2007:Vol. 315. no. 5813, 796-798). It shows that more than 55% of the energy produced is lost, mainly in transmission and distribution on the grid (approx 25%) and another 30% in transport-related combustion of petrol [Note to self: do a Sankey diagram comparison for 1911 race car and modern light vehicle].

“…over half of the energy produced for our domestic market goes to waste. Fully two thirds of the energy produced by electrical generation and distribution goes to waste.”

This Sankey diagram shows the energy carriers on the left side, the sectors where energy is consumed (noteworthy: traffic has a larger share than industry) as midpoint groups, and a breakdown to useful and lost energy on the right.

Here are two Sankey diagrams that show the energy losses in an industrial ceramic furnace. The diagrams are oriented top-down. The labels are in German.

The Sankey diagram in blue shows the energy use in an industrial ceramic furnace. The flows are shown in absolute values and in percentage values.

The second diagram in red is similar to the above, but it only show the relative flows in percentiles. Additionally the flows entering the diagram at the top have been separated to show their shares. Other flows (’Rest’) have been grouped together and the individual contributions are shown on the label.