Natural Refrigerants
Summary
SWEP’s work with data centers began more than a decade ago and was initially focused on free cooling. Around 2020, as data centers became denser and more energy-intensive, the company shifted toward liquid cooling, and around 2022 it began seeing increased interest in heat recovery and reuse from data center operators.
EcoDataCenter is a high-performance computing and artificial intelligence facility with 80MW of installed IT power capacity located in Falun, Sweden, and owned by real estate company Areim. The site operates entirely on renewable electricity, with 75% coming from hydropower and the remaining 25% from wind.
The heat recovery system captures low-grade heat from the data center’s chiller condensers at 30–32°C (86–90°F) and transfers it to a nearby combined heat and power facility operated by the municipal utility company Falu Energi & Vatten. There, the recovered heat contributes to the production of wooden pellets, supplementing the CHP plant’s biofuel supply. Roughly 50% of the plant’s total process energy is covered by the heat sourced from EcoDataCenter.
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