TechWeekEurope: Liquid Gas Plants Could Power Data Centres For Nothing

An ingenious proposal to locate data centres near liquid natural gas (LNG) plants could provide all their cooling and electrical power for nothing – and the group behind it hopes to interest European providers in the concept.

Natural gas storage plants produce excess refrigeration, and waste enough energy to run a data centre according toTeraCool. The plan is being looked at by LNG plant owners in several countries, and has won the Audacious Idea prize in the 2013 Green Enterprise IT Awards 2013 from the Uptime Institute.

Free energy from gas plants

Natural gas is typically liquefied at the places where it is extracted from the ground and transported in liquid form in tankers to LNG plants where it is stored in giant cryogenic tanks. When needed, it is turned back into a gas (vaporised) for circulation in the gas supply network.

Liquid gas stores energy, and the vaporisation process releases that energy, while also producing very low temperatures. However, this energy and cooling normally go to waste, because LNG plants are situated away from population centres which could use them.

“We think there is a tremendous opportunity,” Bob Shatten, president of TeraCool, told TechWeekEurope.“We have had interest from some LN G terminals – now we need to get the data centre world to step outside of the box and align their interests at one of these locations.”  MORE