As more and more of our lives turn digital, the demand for data centers continues to grow, along with their consumption of energy. With data centers using roughly 1.8% of all energy in the US, recycling the waste heat from cooling the servers is a huge opportunity for the environment and the bottom line.
One challenge is that this heat is generally low grade (150F, 65.5C), limiting the applications, and in gaseous state, making it more difficult to capture.
An ideal application would be to use this heat for cooling, with an absorption chiller, to directly reduce the cooling load of the data center. Unfortunately, most commercially available absorption chillers require inlet temperatures above 70C with hot water.
You may be thinking that a heat for electricity application would be great as well. Take the heat, generate power to run the servers, piece of cake! Similar to absorption chillers, most low temperature power generators need at least 80C in the form of hot water. Not a good fit.
That leaves heat for warming. A promising use for the heat is in district heating, such as hot water loops or climate control in cold areas. Some data centers are already picking up on this trend, such as Amazon, who heats their headquarters with energy from a data center across the street.
If you have a potential heat recovery project for a data center or any other application, check out our free online calculator to assess your heat source and get in touch with us.