raw · papers · ingested 2026-06-26
Waste heat recovery in a data center with an adsorption chiller: technical and economic analysis
Source: https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/256900/
Source: Gupta, R. & Puri, I.K., Energy Conversion and Management, 2021, DOI 10.1016/j.enconman.2021.114576 (open-access copy: Glasgow eprints 256900). Credibility: High (peer-reviewed, open access). Confidence: high.
Key points
- Silica-gel/water adsorption chiller driven by water-cooled rack waste heat displaces vapor-compression cooling load.
- Payback as low as 285 days (90 kW unit), 379 days (30 kW unit) — heat-driven cooling beats electric chillers economically when capex is recovered in <~1 yr on free waste heat.
- Raising the water-cooled rack inlet from 40→65 C improves chiller efficiency 16% (but costs 6% compute-per-watt) — quantifies the thermal sweet spot.
- Energy-savings efficiency improved 22.5%; ~104 tons/yr CO2 avoided.
Relevance
Hard numbers for the niche where heat-driven cooling clearly beats PV/electric: a continuous on-site waste-heat loop. The decision pivot is “free heat + steady load,” not raw efficiency. Complements the existing data-center-adsorption-deployments source and feeds solar-cooling-pv-vs-thermal.