The below is a section from a larger Sankey diagram by Adrián Chiogna, shown at visualize.org. This is for budget flow and activity based costing.
Check out the full image at visual.ly.
Budget Flow and ABC Cost Flow
Water and Energy Flows in Production
Dutch tech consulting firm ‘Water and Energy Solutions’ looks at optimization opportunities and cost saving potential in industrial production sites.
Their services offer is advertised with this sample Sankey diagram.
Their approach called “Flux Technology” is a methodology that “first considers a production site at the largest possible scope, focusing primarily on intersecting process and utility streams. At different scope levels we analyze site, plant(s), unit operations, equipment and general operations both qualitatively as well as quantitatively.”
China Energy Balance, Air Pollution
Air pollution in Beijing, with orange alerts and high health risks made the news (again) recently.
One measure discussed to reduce pollution levels is to issue a partial ban for cars on the streets. This would certainly reduce some of the pressure, however, I am not quite sure whether this would significantly help improve the situation.
Looking at this 2005 energy flow Sankey diagram for China from World Resources Sim Center, one notices that the largest chunk of energy produced in China is from coal.
The energy from coal consumed in 2005 (purple boxes) was seven times higher than the energy consumed in the transportation sector (1.450 million tonnes of coal equivalent vs 230 million tonnes of coal equivalent, if I interpret this correctly). That is without counting losses that occur both at power stations as well as in vehicle engines.
Of course one might argue that traffic probably has risen enormously since 2005. I checked the latest available data for China (2011) at the International Energy Agency (IEA) website where you can access the national energy flow diagrams for more than 100 countries.
It confirms that both coal and petroleum consumption have risen, but coal is still predominant. Transportation makes up for “only” roughly 200 Mtoe (Millions of tonnes of oil equivalent) out of 1644 Mtoe final consumption, while the significant consumption is in industry and ‘other’ (probably private home heating).
So, even if burning of coal and gasoline has different levels of pollution (e.g. through efficient filtering technolgy), my guess is that the main reason for the smog in China are the coal-fired power plants and industrial furnaces. Reducing vehicle traffic will not lead to reduced coal-burning.
Anyone has data on GHG emissions from different sources in China? (preferably as a Sankey diagram….).
Student Videos on Sankey Diagrams
Found the below two videos while browsing for the keyword “sankey diagrams” on youtube.com.
This seems to be the output of a student assignment at Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Note that the narrative is in Spanish.
In the first video Marcela Rojas explains the basics of building up Sankey diagrams and how to create a national energy balance diagram.
In the other, longer video Paola Cifuentes shows us how she created the ‘balanco energetico minero de Colombia’.
Enjoy!