Techno-Economic Analysis of Waste Heat Utilization in Data Centers: Application of Absorption Chiller Systems

Leyla Amiri, Edris Madadian, Navid Bahrani and Seyed Ali Ghoreishi-Madiseh
Additional contact information
Leyla Amiri: Department of Civil and Resource Engineering, Dalhousie University, Sexton Campus, Halifax, NS B3H 4R2, Canada
Edris Madadian: Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada
Navid Bahrani: Department of Civil and Resource Engineering, Dalhousie University, Sexton Campus, Halifax, NS B3H 4R2, Canada
Seyed Ali Ghoreishi-Madiseh: Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 9, 1-11

Abstract: Modern data centers are playing a pivotal role in the global economic situation. Unlike high-quality source of waste heat, it is challenging to recover the decentralized and low-quality waste heat sourced from data centers due to numerous technological and economic hurdles. As such, it is of the utmost importance to explore possible pathways to maximize the energy efficiency of the data centers and to utilize their heat recovery. Absorption chiller systems are a promising technology for the recovery of waste heat at ultra-low temperatures. In fact, the low temperature heat discharged from data centers cannot be retrieved with conventional heat recovery systems. Therefore, the present study investigated feasibility of waste heat recovery from data centers using an absorption chiller system, with the ultimate goal of electrical energy production. To fulfill this objective, a techno-economic assessment of heat recovery using absorption chiller (AC) technique for the data centers with power consumption range of 4.5 to 13.5 MW is performed. The proposed AC system enables saving electricity for the value of 4,340,000 kWh/year and 13,025,000 kWh/year leading to an annual reduction of 3068 and 9208 tons CO 2 equivalent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, respectively. The results of this study suggest an optimum change in the design of the data center while reducing the payback period for the investors.

Keywords: waste heat recovery; absorption chiller; data center; sustainability; thermal pollution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/9/2433/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/9/2433/ (text/html)

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:gam:jeners:v:14:y:2021:i:9:p:2433-:d:542679

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().