Utilising Cold Energy from Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) to Reduce the Electricity Cost of Data Centres

• Published in: Energies
• Main Authors: Maytungkorn Sermsuk, Yanin Sukjai, Montri Wiboonrat, Kunlanan Kiatkittipong
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute 2021
• Subjects: LNG; cold energy utilisation; intermediate fluid vaporiser; data centre; free cooling; energy efficiency; Iceland
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.3390/en14196269

The Office of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission has reported that, from 2014 to 2018, Thailand’s internet usage has grown six-fold to 3.3 million terabytes per annum. This market trend highlights one of the policies of Thailand 4.0, with the aim of making Thailand a hub for information transfer in ASEAN. As a result, there will be a massive demand growth for data storage facilities in the near future. Data centres are regarded as the brain and heart of the digital industry and are essential for facilitating businesses in organising, processing, storing and disseminating large amounts of data. As the energy demand for equipment cooling contributes to over 37% of the total energy consumption, the data centres of the world’s leading companies, such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Facebook, are generally located in cold climate zones, such as Iceland, in order to reduce operating costs for cooling. Due to this reason, the possibility of data centres in Thailand is limited. Beneficially, PTTLNG, as the first liquified natural gas (LNG) terminal in Thailand, has processed the import, receiving, storage and regasification of LNG. The high abundance of cold energy inherently presented in LNG is normally lost to the surroundings during regasification. Presently, PTTLNG’s LNG receiving terminal utilises a heat exchanger with propane as an intermediate fluid to transfer cold energy from LNG to water. This cold energy, in the form of cold water, is then used in several projects within the LNG receiving terminal: (1) production of electricity via an organic Rankine cycle capacity of 5 MWh; (2) cooling the air inlet of gas turbine generators to increase the generator efficiency; (3) replacing refrigerant heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems within buildings; (4) development of winter plantations with precision agriculture to replace imported products. Therefore, this study focuses on the potential and future use for LNG cold energy by performing a thermodynamic and economic analysis of ...