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by newpavlov 22 days ago
Because it's not economical, the required hardware is unlikely to pay for itself during its lifetime. The gradient is too small (~50C), which means low Carnot efficiency. Additionally, extraction of low-enthalpy energy involves obstruction of heat transfer, meaning lower cooling efficiency. It may have been a different story if we had computer hardware able to efficiently operate at 200-300C.

Even steel plants which deal with significantly higher waste heat gradients rarely bother with recovering energy.

1 comments

> It may have been a different story if we had computer hardware able to efficiently operate at 200-300C.

Do I see a market opening here?