Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mattfields 1186 days ago
Most interesting unanswered question for me:

How do these companies transport the (waste heat) via heated mineral oil to the recipient?

Presumably not every server farm could have it directly piped to the customer, as they're not all necessarily in immediate proximity to a public pool:

Is the heated water or oil then shipped in some some kind of insulated container?

2 comments

Sounds like they're on-prem:

The computers are submerged in mineral oil that captures heat that gets transferred into pool water with a heat exchanger. The pool still has a gas boiler to boost the water's temperature if required. Deep Green claims it's transferring about 96 percent of the energy used by its computers and reducing a pool's gas heat usage by 62 percent. Deep Green is paying the Exmouth Leisure Centre for all the electricity its data center uses, as well as any setup costs, and the Exmouth Leisure Centre gets the heat for free.

I assume Deep Green is also paying for the networking, but I notice they don't mention that they're paying for space? So free heating in exchange for free colo space?
In this case the 24KW data centre is on site. They just heat pump from the mineral oil to the water.