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Microturbines Power, Cool Servers Simultaneously
jfruhlinger writes "The infrastructure of a large data center poses two main problems: You need to find a way to reliably power all those servers, and you need to figure out a way to deal with the heat those servers put off. Syracuse University and the University of Toledo are experimenting with one gadget to solve both problems. Small power units that run on natural gas, called microturbines, provide reliable DC power separate from the utility grid, and their heat output can paradoxically be harnessed to cool the servers and transmit the heat to other buildings on campus."
Purdue has done this for years, but with macro turbines. The main physical plant provides power, chilled water and heat most of the University.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Can they sell unused power back to the grid?
They have a pretty large natural gas co-generation facility for their physics department. This ought to help.
My gaming PC already sounds like a Hoover and now you're telling me the next evolution in cooling is to put a turbine in it? :o(
Will it finally have meaning?
Will future PCs suffer from turbine lag?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
But, can it be used to make a flying car?
We needed a car analogy at this point, and this is all I could come up with...
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Where do you buy a power supply for a server that is DC-DC?
They keep using that word, and I do not think it means what they think it means. The animation makes them look roughly the size of a server rack. What's so micro about that? I don't consider anything that could fall over and crush me to death as being 'micro'. They have got to stop using this buzzword to describe everything. It's become the e- and i- prefix of the 2010s..
This is combined heat and power many facilities do it. It is green in the sense that energy is conserved because waste heat is used rather than discarded. A data center seems to be a good opportunity. The turbine converts 1 CH4 unit to 0.3 electricity, while the absorption chiller will move about as much energy as it consumes (COP 1), which means the 0.7 waste heat off the turbine can easily move the 0.3 units of data center electricity out of the data center and 0.4 units of waste heat (+ 0.3 data center heat) can still be used for another purpose. It might be good for a data center operator, but from a systems perspective the better use for that CH4 is still in a combined cycle utility plant which can make 0.6 electricity, use the waste heat for some co-located industrial facility and make the datacenter run an electric AC (COP ~ 3).
I guess you could use a Stirling Engine for example to convert excess heat to energy which could be used to minimize your draw from the grid. However the best route is to go more efficient so you don't have too much excess heat to begin with.
Someone's never heard of LP gas-powered refrigerators.
There's no "paradox" in using waste heat to generate chilled water. It's done all the time.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/89710-the-fanless-spinning-heatsink-the-heatsink-is-the-fan
So carrier-grade gear will be DC-DC.
I had one overseas where we had no power.
I do this at home. My computers are really cool. Oh wait. Natural GAS not natural grass. Nevermind.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Windmills do not work that way! Goodnight
Once we've got that finally cracked then things will get really interesting. Who knows, we might even have true AI within twenty years.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Windmills do not work that way! Goodnight!!
Furries make the internet go.
how, exactly, is this a new idea? there is absolutely nothing new about this idea. absorption chillers were hardly "created" by IBM and Syracuse - they have been around since the 20s. the navy has done the same thing on ships for years as have heavy industry and large central energy systems such as the system at Purdue mentioned above.
yay for them i guess, but it's hardly groundbreaking.
Turbines can do a lot of work. They can produce power and compressed air simultaneously. Would be interesting if that compressed air supply was run through one of these. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_tube We have a small one in the shop, a very simple device. Connecting it to our shop air, at 125psi, creates air at one end that will make your fingers go numb, and the other end outputs heat at about hair drier temperatures. The tube is about 6 inches long and 1 inch in diameter.