Feasibility of heat recovery for district heating based on Cloud Computing Industrial Park

Abstract

Heat recovery has been an effective way to improve the energy efficiency of industrial park. Most studies have focused on a single source of waste heat to be reused for energy system of industries. Generally, the lower temperature waste heat is suitable to be the heat source of heat pump for district heating. With the development of information technology, it is possible to find the energy-intensive data centers allocated together to be cooled with the same cooling system, which is called Cloud Computing Industrial Park. As for the data centers based on CCHP system, the waste heat source could be both the cooling water of power plant and the chilled water from the cooling system of data centers. In the present study of cloud computing industrial park in China, two possible heat recovery schemes were proposed and optimized. Consequently, the waste heat from data centers will be the first option of the heat source of district heating. While cooling water carrying waste heat from low-pressure turbine will be supplementary to the first option for providing enough heat for district heating in order to avoid the risk of the shortage of heating. In this case, site-wide analysis by proposing a optimized operation mode enable the operators to control a complete site while considering the energy demands and heat recovery opportunities from each process unit.