Complementary waste heat utilization from data center to ecological farm: A technical, economic and environmental perspective

The waste heat recovery technology of data center has attracted the attentions for energy conservation and emission reduction in recent years. This paper presents a new scheme which uses heat recovery technology to link the data center and the agricultural sector. The detailed system design, technical validation, and environmental and economic analysis show that the project can fully absorb a large amount of waste heat in the data center, and use the air source heat pump (ASHP) to transport heat to an ecological farm, reducing the consumption of electric energy and promoting the development of agriculture and animal husbandry. In a case study of China Brain Green Data Center, the dynamic payback period is about 3.4 years, and the cumulative net present value will reach $666 k. In terms of environmental impact, the proposed ASHP-based complementary utilization scheme can save 676 MWh of electricity for the data center and 88 MWh of electricity for the ecological farm in each year, which is equivalent to reducing coal by 230 tons and reducing CO2 emissions by 168 tons. Therefore, from the perspective of economic and environmental benefits, this new complementary waste heat utilization technology realizes a win-win development.