A fuel cell powered rack prototype for data center application with waste heat recovery: design consideration and experimental verification

Abstract

The combination of data center and PEMFC has been a promising data center zero-carbon emission solution. However, the relevant experimental studies are very rare and most work only solved the simple electrical coupling. This paper proposed a new in-rack data center servers and PEMFC coupling design scheme considering both the electrical coupling and thermal management coupling of the servers and PEMFC, and built a cabinet prototype for the first time. The complete multi-condition continuous experiment on the PEMFC system fully demonstrates the servers power supply stability of the prototype with the fast tested power response capability of 4.9 kW in 0.1 s. The experiments under rated condition (when the servers power is 5 kW) were conducted and the carbon emission level and efficiency performance of the prototype are analyzed. Under the rated condition, the highest prototype CHP efficiency is 64.1 % while the prototype can provide 41.6 ℃ hot water with 3.04 L·min-1 and the lowest prototype CHP efficiency is 59.8 % while the prototype can provide 61.1 ℃ hot water with 1.33 L·min-1. The prototype maintains the zero-carbon (or negative carbon) emission of servers. The average operation carbon emission rate is -35 g·h-1. Compared with the full grid supporting data center, the power average prototype operation carbon reduction rate is 0.13 g·s-1·kW-1. The application potential of the proposed data center and PEMFC coupling scheme is demonstrated with the prototype experiment results from the advantage of carbon emission and heat recovery potential.