Master's Thesis: Water treatment utilizing data centers waste heat

Background
The number of data centers is continuously growing to support the increasing digitization demand and the need for data processing. The data center sector today is one of the strongest growing and with the growth of AI usage it is expected to continue grow in the future. Most of the energy provided to the servers, 99.97%, will turn into heat from losses in the microelectronics (CPUs, GPUs). This makes a data center a large heat source with potential to support heat reuse applications.

One drawback of the heat stemming from a data center is the low grade of the heat. Excess heat temperatures are typically 32-40C from an air-cooled data center as in the picture below. Liquid cooled data centers can reach somewhat higher output temperatures 40-45C. Since data centers can consume tens or even hundreds of MWs of electric power, the amount of waste heat are tremendous, but the low temperature makes it challenging to utilize.

A common method in regions with a district heating network available, is to add a heat pump to upgrade the temperature of the heat. Heat pumps can also be used in the integration with other heat reuse applications. The main drawback with using heat pumps is the need of a compressor in the loop and the added electricity required to drive the heat pump. There are other re-use application where the heat are used without upgrading, such as green houses, swimming pool heating, biomass drying etc.

An innovative heat reuse application using data center residua heat, that we would like investigate further is water treatment, both for data center internal water use and for contributing to the surrounding community. Water treatment can be distillation of salt water or cleaning of dirty grey water. There exist technologies that use heat as driver of the water treatment process, but the feasibility of the technologies for data centers needs to be studied further.

This is an ambitious desk top study project, sponsored by a few large data center operators, that involves working with cutting edge technologies in what is known currently to be one of the hottest industries. If you feel you need to be challenged by this unique opportunity and want to contribute to the field of sustainability, we would love to hear from you.

Work description.
The aim of the master thesis it to evaluate the technology readiness level of a couple of water treatment technologies and do cost-benefit analysis using a simulation model.

The objectives are the following:
• Literature study of previous work finding the state of art of water treatment technologies.
• Evaluate technology readiness levels of different technologies to be used for low grade heat and possible products and select study cases.
• Study the cost-benefit metrics for a few chosen technologies or products. Estimate performance in combination with data centers and heat pumps.
• Model performance, energy, and water production and treatment in operation for different temperatures, energy flows and heat pump configurations.
• Present the results and outputs for both RISE, industry partners and examining university (presentation and written report).
• Familiarization and tour of ICE data center facility.

The master thesis work will be carried out at RISE ICE Datacenter in Luleå during the fall of 2024, corresponding to 30 ETCs. A scholarship of 30 000 SEK will be paid at a successfully conducted thesis work. Please upload grades from the master program.

Welcome with your application
For more details contact Tor Björn Minde, tor.bjorn.minde@ri.se, +46 10 228 45 37.
Supervisor, Jonas Gustafsson, jonas.gustafsson@ri.se, +46 10 228 44 39. Application deadline is 30 September 2024.