A review of data center cooling technology, operating conditions and the corresponding low-grade waste heat recovery opportunities
Khosrow Ebrahimi,
Gerard F. Jones and
Amy S. Fleischer
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2014, vol. 31, issue C, 622-638
Abstract:
The depletion of the world's limited reservoirs of fossil fuels, the worldwide impact of global warming and the high cost of energy are among the primary issues driving a renewed interest in the capture and reuse of waste energy. A major source of waste energy is being created by data centers through the increasing demand for cloud based connectivity and performance. In fact, recent figures show that data centers are responsible for more than 2% of the US total electricity usage. Almost half of this power is used for cooling the electronics, creating a significant stream of waste heat. The difficulty associated with recovering and reusing this stream of waste heat is that the heat is of low quality. In this paper, the most promising methods and technologies for recovering data center low-grade waste heat in an effective and economically reasonable way are identified and discussed.
Keywords: Data center; Waste heat recovery; Waste energy reuse; Absorption refrigeration; Organic Rankine cycle; Thermoelectric (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (92)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032113008216
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:rensus:v:31:y:2014:i:c:p:622-638
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600126/bibliographic
DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2013.12.007
Access Statistics for this article
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews is currently edited by L. Kazmerski
More articles in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().