Giving new meaning to the term “server farm,” a team of Hewlett-Packard researchers has come up with a plan for combining cow chips and computer chips to build an environmentally friendly data center — powered by manure.
In a paper set for release this week, HP scientists have proposed using a “biogas” recovery system that would convert livestock waste into methane, to be used as fuel to generate electricity for data centers — those cutting-edge computer facilities that serve as the nerve centers for an increasingly Internet-dependent world.
In turn, the system would use the heat produced by the banks of server computers — sometimes referred to as server farms — to assist the process of converting the animal waste into fuel.
The result is what Chandrakant Patel, a scientist at HP Labs in Palo Alto, Calif., calls “a symbiotic relationship between manure and IT.”
Patel, who recalls collecting buffalo droppings for fuel as a boy in rural India, says the ancient practice of burning manure for energy can be updated with new technology, in a process his team has outlined in a paper they’re presenting this week at a conference on energy sustainability, convened in Phoenix by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
HP says it has no immediate plans to build a dung-powered data center.
But these days, energy efficiency is an industry Holy Grail.
Modern data centers require vast amounts of electricity, both to power their high-tech components and to run air conditioners that keep the computers from over-heating. That translates to high energy bills and a big carbon footprint, at a time when corporations face growing pressure to be green.
Some big tech companies, including Google and Microsoft, have built large data centers in the Pacific Northwest, where power from hydroelectric dams is plentiful and less pricey.
But that’s not always an option, and Patel…