HEAT RECOVERY Chilling out with hot data
Data centres produce significant waste heat that can be captured and repurposed for district heating systems to serve commercial properties, manufacturing facilities, and residential buildings. This is far more environmentally friendly than simply releasing heat into the atmosphere. Tim Mitchell, sales director of Klima- Therm, examines the true potential of heat recovery
T
wo shocking statistics make a powerful case for focusing heavily on sustainability in data centre cooling. First, it has been estimated that the average data centre consumes more than 100 times
more power than a large commercial office building, while a hyperscale data centre uses the electricity equivalent of a small town.
Secondly, as much as 40% of the total operational costs for a data centre come from the energy needed to power and cool the colossal amounts of equipment these facilities require. But there are other statistics associated with heat produced by data centres that are equally staggering. It has, for example, been estimated that a typical large data centre will generate 20 to 50MW of heat, and that a data centre ‘campus’ can produce up to 300MW – enough for a medium-sized city. Indeed, data centres are among the most rapidly growing sources of waste heat, with their use rocketing by more than 250% over the last five years, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency. In Germany, data centres now convert more than 13TWh of electricity per year into heat, typically at temperatures of 25 to 40°C, most of which is wasted. To operate effectively, data centres need to run in a safe, energy efficient, and sustainable way and that means neutralising unwanted heat. The most significant source of this is the heat generated by the IT equipment itself. The temperature range in the aisles of a typical data centre is between 26 and 46°C. A large data centre could produce up to 50MW
of heat and this must be removed. But cooling itself need not be the only function of modern data centre cooling systems – they also have the ability to recover and reuse waste heat. The heat produced by increasingly powerful computers can be captured and recycled using district heating systems if located next to urban developments, providing ‘free’ heat to manufacturing facilities, hospitals, leisure centres and housing developments. Simply put, a waste heat recovery system
produces power by using the heat energy lost to the surroundings from thermal processes, at no additional fuel input. As well as helping with the decarbonisation effort, this approach can also use less energy than releasing heat into the
atmosphere meaning lower bills, thus creating a ‘win-win’ situation. Data centres typically run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year without interruption. Although they offer a powerful resource for managing streaming services, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things services, cloud storage, and so on, they also consume vast amounts of energy, thereby being responsible for emitting huge volumes of carbon, and, as we have pointed out, they generate enormous quantities of unwanted heat. The best way to reduce energy and emissions from data centres is to capture heat from various sources within them, including exhaust air, circulating water,
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May25.indd 1 12 BUILDING SERVICES & ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEER MAY 2025 Read the latest at:
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