Energy saving research of waste heat recovery heating system forsmall data centers in buildings

Taking a typical office building with a small data center as an example, this study proposes a system that utilizes waste heat recovered from the building’s small data center to provide heating for other zones. A TRNSYS model is established to calculate the system’s energy consumption during the entire heating season. The proposed system is compared with a baseline system using direct-expansion air conditioning for data center cooling and gas-fired boilers for heating in terms of energy consumption, carbon emissions, and operational costs. Simulation results show that when using a maximum heat storage tank, the waste heat recovery system achieves approximately 49.02% energy saving, 29.70% CO2 emission reduction, and a payback period of about 4.45 years compared with the baseline system. When reducing heat storage tank volume, an auxiliary heat source needs to be added, in which case the energy saving rate and carbon reduction rate can reach at least 32.53% and 19.57%, respectively, and the investment payback period can be as short as 2.79 years.