By Rich Miller
19 April 2012Microsoft is planning a waste-powered data center that will be built on the site of a water treatment plant or landfill, the company said Wednesday. The project will be the first step towards Microsoft’s goal of deploying “data plants” where modular data centers will be powered by renewable energy.
The initiative is part of the company’s long-term strategy to make its cloud computing infrastructure as sustainable and efficient as possible. The first data plant will be powered by biogas, according to Christian Belady, Microsoft’s General Manager of Data Center Services. Belady outlined Microsoft’s concept in a blog post Wednesday on the Global Foundation Services web site.
“Currently, our team is researching the first-ever grid independent fuel cell, data center that is fueled directly from biogas,” Belady wrote. “The experiment is small scale, so we can demonstrate and measure the benefits of it like we did with our ‘data center in a tent project’ in 2008. We are also talking with several municipalities about a public-private partnership to test a prototype.”
That prototype will involve placing modular data centers filled with servers at a water treatment plant or landfill. “Water treatment plants are mission critical installations that produce methane (CH4), a greenhouse gas that is 20 times more potent than CO2, as the sewage from our communities are broken down in an anaerobic digestion process (decomposition without oxygen),” Belady explained. “Landfills produce methane in a similar way as our garbage slowly decomposes underground. The methane that is produced by both approaches must be flared, converting it to CO2 to minimize the impact on the environment.”
The methane output will be used in a fuel cell, which in turn will provide electricity for the servers housed in IT PACs (Pre-Assembled Components), Microsoft’s custom modular data centers, which can house up to 2,000 servers apiece. A small 200 kW prototype data center will offset over two million pounds of CO2 emissions per year, according to Microsoft, which is the equivalent of about 300 Honda Civics being taken off the road. […]
Monday, April 23, 2012
Microsoft data plants will tap landfills, sewage for power
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Funding boost for Redmond-based waste methane processor
Landfills, coal beds and cattle feedlots all produce methane, which is often either flared — that is, burned off — or released into the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas.
Prometheus Energy, a five-year-old company based in Redmond, Wash., has developed a technology to turn that waste methane into liquid natural gas. And the company this week raised $20 million from the Shell Technology Ventures Fund, a fund related to the petroleum company Royal Dutch Shell and Black River Asset Management, a subsidiary of the agriculture giant Cargill.
The deal represents a vote of confidence from a fund connected to the world’s largest nongovernmental producer of liquid natural gas, and industry insiders say it’s a victory for a technology that has remained small until now.
Michael Butler, the chief executive of Cascadia Capital, an investment banking firm that arranged the financing for Prometheus, said that Shell, which has plenty of stranded oil and gas mines that could supply waste methane, wants to help Prometheus expand around the world. The news also signifies a second chance for Prometheus, which was delisted from London’s Alternative Investment Market last year.
The 27-employee company began producing liquid natural gas at plants in Southern California and in southern Utah last year, and expects to start production at a plant in Poland next year, said Kirt Montague, the chief executive of Prometheus. The company takes waste gas that landfills and coal mines already collect for flaring, and purifies it into methane, removing the carbon dioxide, nitrogen, water, oxygen, sulfur and other components, before converting it into liquid natural gas. …
Funding Boost for Waste Methane Processor
Monday, April 6, 2009
Bacteria turn excess clean energy into methane for storage
Scientists at Pennsylvania State University have discovered a solution to the problem of reliable storage for alternative energy: a bacteria that can convert electricity to methane when combined with CO2.
Any surplus power from wind, solar, or tidal sources is fed into the bacteria and combined with CO2 from the atmosphere to create methane for storage. Methane is a clean-burning gas and 80% of energy fed into the process was retained at the end. ...
Friday, March 6, 2009
Why yes, methane bubbling up from a frozen lake can be lit on fire
Now that I've got your attention with scientists lighting methane bubbling up from a frozen lake (and very nearly themselves) on fire it's time to turn attention to the threat of, as Climate Feedback puts it, the sleeping giant of climate change. In case you're not aware...
Why Yes, Methane Bubbling Up From a Frozen Lake Can Be Lit on Fire
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