World’s first bio circular data centre launches

Data4, France’s largest data centre operator and investor, and the University of Paris-Saclay, have signed a collaboration agreement to initiate a pilot project to re-use some of the heat generated by a data centre.

In a world where digital technology is growing at an exponential rate and data centres are storing more data than ever before (+35 per year globally), the environmental responsibility of the industry needs to match the challenge.

This R&D project addresses the strategic challenge of how to reuse the heat generated by data centres. In fact, to avoid losing this heat, several reuse solutions are currently being explored. The most common one is to heat nearby homes, but this only uses 20% of the available heat.

For this reason, Data4 is exploring new ways to use this heat, including replicating the natural photosynthesis process by growing algae with some of the C02 captured, recycling it as biomass to create new circular power sources, and reusing the heat in the production of bio-based products for other sectors (e.g. cosmetics, agri-food, etc.).

Patrick Duvaut, Vice-President of the Université Paris-Saclay and President of the Foundation Paris-Saclay, highlighted the project’s potential: “Thanks to a feasibility study carried out with the startup Blue Planet Ecosystems, as part of the ABIOMAS chair of the Foundation Université Paris-Saclay, we have been able to calculate the efficiency of this carbon capture, which can be 20 times greater than that of a tree (for an equivalent surface area).”