Comment by lostlogin
If rack mounted, you are ending up with something like a reverse power station.
So why not use it as an energy source? Spin a turbine.
If rack mounted, you are ending up with something like a reverse power station.
So why not use it as an energy source? Spin a turbine.
That's basically the principle of binary cycle[1] generators. However for data center waste heat recovery, I'd think you'd want to use a more stable fluid for cooling, and then pump it to a separate closed-loop binary-cycle generator. No reason to make your datacenter cooling system also deal with high pressure fluids, and moving high pressure working fluid from 1000s of chips to a turbine of sufficient size, etc.
If my very stale physics is accurate then even with perfect thermodynamic efficiency you would only recover about a third of the energy that you put into the chips.
I'm aware of the efficiency losses but I think it would be amusing to use that turbine to help power the machine generating the heat.
If you let the chip actual boil enough water to run a turbine you're going to have a hard time keeping the magic smoke inside. Much better to run at reasonable temps and try to recover energy from the waste heat.