A techno-economic evaluation of low global warming potential heat pump assisted organic Rankine cycle systems for data center waste heat recovery

The increased use of cloud-based technology services in recent years has led to a global rise in data centers. Data centers consume vast amounts of electricity for server cooling. Servers are typically cooled using air-source vapour compression chillers which exhaust low-grade waste heat to the outdoors via a cooling tower. This waste heat can be recovered to a large degree by integrating an organic Rankine power cycle into the system. Although heat pump assisted organic Rankine cycle cooling systems have recently emerged as an efficient alternative to conventional air-source chiller systems, they may be considered to be as harmful to the environment due to their use of high global warming potential working fluids. The objective of this work is to determine the thermodynamic performance of several key heat pump assisted organic Rankine cycles that utilize low global warming potential working fluids and assess the economic impact of their utilization relative to a conventional air-source vapour compression chiller. Results show that heat pump assisted organic Rankine cycle systems utilizing low global warming potential working fluids are able to achieve efficiencies that are comparable to systems utilizing conventional working fluids. Additionally, these systems are found to be up to 65% less expensive than airsource vapour compression chillers and are less sensitive to variations in economic parameters. These results show promise with regards to their future implementation in both existing and future data centers.

Automated summary

The increased use of cloud-based technology services has led to a rise in data centers globally. Data centers consume a significant amount of electricity for server cooling. In this study, the thermodynamic performance of heat pump assisted organic Rankine cycles using low global warming potential working fluids is evaluated, and their economic impact is assessed. The results show that these systems can achieve comparable efficiencies to conventional systems and are cost-effective.