Preheat to 60°C using waste server heat, then boil conventionally.
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TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Waste heat recovery is a thing, and the economics usually work out in your favor if the feed material is really hot. If it’s only mildly warm, you’ll need a lot of machinery to concentrate the heat and raise the temperature to a useful level. At some point, the investment just gets absurd and the idea gets scrapped.
Using heat as heat makes the most sense, since there are fewer lost steps. Theoretically, you could boil water with server heat, but the massive investment is probably the reason why that isn’t happening everywhere. Running reverse osmosis probably won’t work, because you need electricity for the pumps, and converting heat into electricity comes with significant losses.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 day ago
TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Yes, that helps to lower the total energy cost of boiling the water. It’s better than nothing, but still pretty far from ideal.
Fermion@feddit.nl 1 day ago
I wonder if it would be worthwhile to colocate large greenhouses with datacenters. The exhaust temperatures seem compatible with hothouse growing. The heat would still end up in the atmosphere, but at least it could enable growth of fresh local produce first.