Airedale and aql explore using data-centre heat for district heating
Airedale and aql, which operates two data centres in Leeds, are collaborating to design and build a district-heating scheme using heat rejected from these data centres. Dr Adam Beaumont, CEO of aql, explains, ‘Our latest with Airedale is to investigate the feasibility of building a prototype district-heating scheme providing several hundred kilowatts of heating by “recycling” waste heat from our data centres.’
Airedale provides aql data centres with efficient cooling solutions that integrate its free-cooling chillers using ambient air to cool intelligent indoor units.
Dr Beaumont elaborates, Our partnership with Airedale is perfect. Before I formed aql in 1998, I was a lecturer at Leeds University, and one of my specialisms was thermodynamics. After forming a technology company, I never though that this discipline would be of relevance to me again, but once we started building our own data centres, it became clear that managing heat flow in an efficient manner has a huge effect on our profitability and environmental impact.’
Aql plans to use the waste year to warm its own 300-seat city-centre conference auditorium and hopes eventually to provide heating to The Tetley, a nearby contemporary art-space initiative operated by Project Space Leeds.
