Organic rankine cycle for data center electronics cooling and thermal energy recovery

Abstract

A technique for recovering power from data center waste heat involves an organic Rankine cycle which includes pumping an organic working fluid through a low-temperature preheater chamber configured to exchange relatively low-temperature waste heat from low-temperature data storage devices to the organic working fluid flowing through the preheater chamber, pumping the working fluid through a high-temperature evaporator thermally coupled with the preheater chamber and configured to exchange relatively high-temperature waste heat from high-temperature CPUs to the working fluid flowing through the evaporator, and pumping the working fluid vapor from the evaporator to an expander for generating power via expansion of the working fluid. The preheater and evaporator may be directly incorporated with the enclosure box housing the various heat-generating components.