Helping data centers become carbon neutral with novel microchannel heat sinks

What is it about?

Data centers (used to store and process data) are an essential part of today’s digital world. But processing data produces a lot of heat, which takes up a lot of energy for cooling. They are also major emitters of carbon. With the global call for carbon neutrality and to fight climate change, data centers need to become more energy efficient. One way to do this is by recovering the waste heat from data centers and reusing it. The authors of this study created a novel heat sink to trap and transfer the heat from data centers to 4th Gen district heating networks. These networks are local low carbon grids that collect and supply energy from varied secondary resources. The heat sink used a two phase microchannel heat exchange technology that enabled better heat transfer. It was built using additive manufacturing (A.M.), which made it easy to produce it at a low cost.

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Photo by Taylor Vick on Unsplash

Photo by Taylor Vick on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Globally, data centers use about 1% of all electricity and emit 0.3% of carbon dioxide. Reusing the waste heat from data centers can help conserve this electricity. It can also reduce 4.5% of carbon emissions from the district heating systems. The proposed heat sink can collect and transfer up to 700W energy at a temperature of 60°C. Such low temperatures and high heat recovery make it an ideal sustainable heat resource for 4th Gen district heating. Also, the A.M. technology makes this heat sink more affordable and easier to deploy on a large scale. KEY TAKEAWAY: The novel heat sink with the A.M. technology proposed in this study can convert data centers from energy users to energy producers. It can help us get closer to the goal of a net zero carbon world.