![]() ![]() This is a great way to utilise warm water from a data centre and offset its carbon footprint. Essentially, these are giant manmade ponds that grow algae which, as a living plant, absorbs carbon. Firstly, we explored a 100-cubic-meter pond system and looked at how much algae could be harvested. By integrating algae growth into data centres, we can significantly reduce CO2 emissions while also creating usable algae as a byproduct.įrom our research, we wanted to explore how much carbon could be captured in a couple of hypothetical solutions.The heated water creates ideal conditions for growing certain types of algae which have a wide range of commercial and industrial uses, including biofuel.A typical “hyperscale” data centre - the focus of this study - produces significant volumes of usable, heated water as a byproduct of its operations.To conduct this research, we interviewed expert engineers, conducted a review of case studies around the world, and carried out a further case study review to look at effective algae growth and how to maximise on this to reduce carbon. Our research explores how to utilise waste heat from data centres for indoor farming. For an extra sense of scale, it would take less than 2 hours to completely fill the O2 Arena in London. We could fill up 333 baths in 1 second, 19,900 baths in a minute, and 1.19 million baths in an hour just using the warm water from these buildings. To put it into context, if we were to translate heat into water, data centres produce the same volume of water that flows into the river Thames every day. This is a very big problem to solve, and we are all culpable because we all use it. So, we set out to use algae – something that is very commercially available – to reduce the carbon impact of ‘the cloud’ that we so heavily rely upon. We need to figure out a way to use the warm water that we can get from data centres. In both scenarios, the temperature of the waste heat must be significantly increased, which is both inefficient and expensive, and so most waste heat is vented out without attempting any kind of conversion at all. As data centres are typically situated in remote locations, heat is also lost during the transport to the nearest residential infrastructure.Heat is lost at the data centre during the conversion process from air to water.That being said, there are several barriers to successfully executing this strategy: Utilising heat waste from these structures is a potential way to reduce their carbon footprint. As one building powers down, another can power up, delivered in the form of warm water. Ultimately, when offices are heated and then vacated at the end of the day, the district heat network will move this heat to somewhere more useful, like residential areas. One way to use this heat rather than waste it, though, is to put it into a district heat network. This is fairly low-grade heat, which dissipates as it travels. Air ventilation essentially pushes cool air through the computers to take on some of the heat, which is then expelled from the building. ![]() When you run all these computers all day, they get hot, and we need to cool them down. To make matters worse, the global shift to working from home has dramatically accelerated the construction of new data centres around the world. In 2020 alone, data centres accounted for approximately 160 million tons of carbon emissions. Data centres use about 1% of the planet’s electricity and are responsible for about 0.25% of the world’s carbon footprint. Although they improve the quality, efficiency, and experience of internet access, each data centre carries steep environmental costs related to its energy consumption and carbon emissions. In our increasingly online and connected world, the network of data centres supporting the cloud computing services that make it all possible has become a crucial piece of infrastructure. ![]()
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