Eco Factor: Sustainable data center to be powered by electricity generated from manure.
Scientists at Hewlett-Packard have come up with a plan to use cow manure as fuel for a data center. The team has shown how the manure output of cows and heat output of data centers can be combined to create an environmentally sustainable operation. The research team further explained how a farm of 10,000 dairy cows could fulfill the requirements of a 1MW data center, the power left over to support the needs on the farm.
The process works by using the heat generated by the data center to increase the efficiency of anaerobic digestion of animal waste. The digester produces methane, which can be used to generate electricity for the data center. Modern data centers do require a large amount of power, not only to keep the servers running, but also keeping them cool and generating renewable energy for the same could better the eco-credentials of data centers.
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