Dynamic performance of an integrated heat pump system coupled free cooling and waste heat recovery in data centers

Feng Zhou, Xuwen Tian, Yu Song and Guoyuan Ma

Energy, 2025, vol. 323, issue C

Abstract: Recovering and reusing this waste heat for district heating is an effective strategy to enhance energy efficiency in data centers. To align data center waste heat recovery with heat consumer demand and improve energy utilization, a transient mathematical model of a data center-integrated heat pump district heating system was developed and validated. A case study involving a small data center with 300 standard racks in Beijing was conducted to analyze the system's operational and dynamic behavior. The results show that hot water and heating account for 35.70 % and 64.30 % of the total heat consumption, respectively. During the heating season, the heating heat pump unit exhibits a high heating coefficient of performance (COP), with a maximum heating COP of 5.27. Under year-round operation, the COP of the hot water heat pump unit exhibited periodic 24-h variations. Peak water consumption occurred from 6:00 to 9:00 and 21:00 to 24:00, with corresponding heating COP values of 3.87 and 4.24, respectively. The proposed system in addressing the cooling demand of the data center and the heating and hot water demands of the heat consumers, providing a feasible solution for improving the energy utilization efficiency of data centers.

Keywords: Data center; Waste heat recovery; Dynamic performance analysis; Integrated heat pump district heating system (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:323:y:2025:i:c:s036054422501480x

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2025.135838

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