Cows as the engine of the IT industry

Working in a company as big as ours, you can never be sure that you know everything about it. For example, you hardly expect your colleague to suddenly say in an interview with the New York Times a phrase like “IT and dung are in symbiosis”. But Chandrakant D. Patel, the director of our Environmentally Sustainable Information Technology Lab, really said. Therefore, I just can not resist not to tell more in the continuation of this of his fresh thoughts.

First, the global IT industry is experiencing an ever-increasing need for energy sources. In the US, computer centers have long been trying to locate in sparsely populated states, where it is possible to allocate for them low-cost land on the prairies and powerful food resources. But even there it is getting crowded. And India and China, which, together with the modern innovative economy, have to complete the industrial economy, are forced to use free energy sources for new giants.

Both need a solution that is capable of ensuring the growth of the IT industry without large-scale infrastructure investments. And here we go to the cows ...

At all times, farm owners supplied manure to the whole district. Today he has found many replacements on the farm, and he is constantly in abundance with the farmers: as the experts calculated, the average cow produces 55 kg of manure per day. Uncontrolled mountains of his bring harm to the environment, polluting the soil and groundwater. And just, uh, smell for kilometers around.
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But according to estimates by other experts, these same 55 kilograms of manure per day will be enough to support the burning of a 100-watt light bulb. That is about 3 kW / hour from each cow. By skipping further details, we can immediately say that an average farm with 10,000 head of livestock can provide itself and a small data center owned by, for example, a regional bank with energy.

Biogas (about 60% consisting of methane and burning with an efficiency of about 70%) is obtained in special installations using anaerobic digestion. Heat for digestion, as we see in the diagram, can be obtained from the cooling system of the data center. Well, this can really be called a symbiosis.

Of course, while the technology can not be called affordable. For a farmer in the United States, such a small power plant will rise to $ 5 million. But then he will be able to beat off his expenses in 2.5 years. An analysis of electricity prices in the United States shows that the average farm owner can earn about $ 2 million per year.

Yes, and in conclusion I want to remind you that HP is still doing some other things for data centers. Servers, for example ... Well, everything else. This is so, by the way.

And below you can watch a video where Professor Patel explains the principle of technology: