Dairy cows could soon help power data centers

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The green fields of a dairy farm may seem a long way from the high-tech world of data storage, but the two industries could soon help each other out in an unexpected way. New research from Hewlett-Packard has laid out a plan for powering data centers using energy from livestock waste.

The study was compiled into a paper and presented at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers International Conference on Energy Sustainability this week in Phoenix, Arizona. The process described by the research would work by combining the manure output of cows with the heat output of data centers to create an operation that is both environmentally and economically sustainable.

If the ideas of the study were put into practice, the heat generated by the data center would be used to accelerate the anaerobic digestion of animal waste. The resultant methane could then be used to generate power for the data center.

According to the paper, the technique would allow a farm of 10,000 dairy cows to fully power a 1-megawatt data center with enough energy left over to support additional power needs of the farm.

"The idea of using animal waste to generate energy has been around for centuries, with manure being used every day in remote villages to generate heat for cooking," said Tom Christian, principal research scientist of HP’s Sustainable IT Ecosystem Lab. "The new idea that we are presenting in this research is to create a symbiotic relationship between farms and the IT ecosystem that can benefit the farm, the data center and the environment."

Rocky C. Costello of the design firm R.C. Costello & Associates told the New York Times that California and Texas in particular could benefit from the manure idea. Both states have a large number of dairy cows, centralized biogas centers and ties to the technology industry.

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