Innovative waste heat recovery experiment in Sweden

A demo site in northern Sweden showcases fossil-free district heating and cooling with a fuel cell-powered data centre set up for the recovery of waste heat.

RISE Research Institutes of Sweden has set up a small fuel cell-powered data centre in Luleå, a coastal city in northern Sweden, for the recovery of waste heat. The fuel cells generate electricity used to power the Edge data centre and supply the excess heat to the local district heating and cooling grid. RISE is a partner in the EU-funded WEDISTRICT project aimed at demonstrating that district heating and cooling systems can be built on a combination of renewable energy sources and waste heat recovery solutions. In the EU, 50 % of consumed energy goes towards the heating and cooling of buildings, and roughly 70 % of this energy is currently generated from fossil fuels.

How the system is set up

At the Luleå site, the data centre and fuel cells have been set up in two containers stacked one on top of the other. The top container holds the fuel cells that run on locally produced biogas. The bottom container houses a liquid-cooled unit and the data centre, which is backed by an uninterruptible power supply. The system uses solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) that produce electricity from biogas. The SOFCs operate at high temperatures – around 600 ℃ – making them particularly efficient for combined heat and power systems since the waste heat can be put to good use for heating and cooling. However, the high operating temperature also has a disadvantage in that it takes a long time for the SOFC system to start up and reach its operating temperature. “We are using the only commercially available SOFC in Europe … and these are around 60 percent electrically efficient, but because they operate at 650 ℃ they cannot be power cycled and their ramp in power production is poor, but they do provide a good grade of heat,” explains Prof. Jon Summers of RISE in a news item posted on the ‘Data Centre Dynamics’ website. “So we have the data center in a container and stacked on top is the fuel cell container.” (...)

This article was posted on CORDIS | European Commission

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