Cow dung to power datacenters
By siliconindia   |   Wednesday, 26 May 2010, 15:00 IST   |    10 Comments
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Cow dung to power datacenters
Bangalore: Cow dung may soon be used as a source of energy to power computers in the near future as the researchers at HP are developing datacenters that can be powered on energy generated from cow dung. The company has released a study called "Design of Farm Waste-Driven Supply Side Infrastructure for Data Centers" that draws attention to biogas energy created from cow dung. The company plans to build datacentres on dairy farms where they would be hooked up to power plants fueled by waste. Planet Green explained the process of transforming cow manure to biofuel called biogas. In this process, manure is first collected from the cows, and put under an anaerobic digestion process, releasing methane gas. This gas can be used as natural gas or diesel fuel in generators that produce electricity. It apparently takes 10,000 cows to produce enough manure to power a small computer center for a bank. One cow produces enough waste every day to power the televisions in three typical households. However, around 10,000 cows would be needed to produce enough to run a typical data center and meet the energy needs of the farm.

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