Abstract
The number of data centres (DC) in recent years is growing rapidly, and with that, the share in total consumption of electricity is growing too. A significant amount of electricity is transformed into heat energy which increases the optimal temperature in DC for component operation. This heat needs to be removed and usually, it doesn’t have any further application. Today it is recognized that waste heat can be integrated into district heating (DH) and by using it reduce the usage of conventional heat fuels. Integration of waste heat is possible in three ways: with a heat exchanger (HEX), with a booster heat pump, or with the combination of the HEX and heat pump. In this paper, a combination of HP and HEX was used. Although those utilizations are examined and implemented, there is a lack of research on the optimization of the integration of waste heat into the district heating network (DHN). To perform optimization, a thermodynamic model of the DC and a pinch analysis model were developed. In this study, a method for evaluating the economic feasibility of DC waste heat integration into DH systems is proposed. The most suitable integration technology of waste heat into DH systems by using the hourly merit order of waste heat utilization technologies based on pinch analysis is found. The connection pipe between DC and DHN is optimized, and the ideal diameter is determined considering different temperature regimes of the network: low-temperature, ultralow temperature, and neutral temperature networks. The methodology was tested using a case study of a DC in the City of Zagreb.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to express our gratitude to the consortium of the REWARDHeat (Renewable and Waste Heat Recovery for Competitive District Heating and Cooling Networks) Horizon2020 project, Grant Agreement no. 857811. Also, we would like to express our gratitude to the Croatian Science Foundation.
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Miškić, J., Dorotić, H., Pukšec, T. et al. Optimization of data centre waste heat integration into the low-temperature district heating networks. Optim Eng 25, 63–91 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11081-023-09837-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11081-023-09837-5