| Issue |
E3S Web Conf.
Volume 710, 2026
54th AiCARR International Congress “Decarbonising our Future: Energy, Economic and Social Aspects of Smarter and Digitalized Buildings and Cities”
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | 02003 | |
| Number of page(s) | 15 | |
| Section | Decarbonization of Building Services and Energy Integration 1 | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/202671002003 | |
| Published online | 07 May 2026 | |
Optimal operational strategy for waste heat recovery from an IT servers’ room in a university campus
Department of Energy, Politecnico di Milano, Via Lambruschini, 4, 20156 Milano MI, Italy
* Corresponding author: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Abstract
Waste heat recovery in data centres can be an effective strategy to reduce both the overall energy consumption of the server room and the space heating in nearby buildings. Considering the complexity of the interactions between cooling, heat recovery, and building heating systems, this study aims to evaluate the operational integration of data-centre waste heat recovery under realistic demand constraints. This is assessed using a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) optimization framework focusing on a case study that includes a university building from the Politecnico di Milano campus and an IT server room, considering a water-to-water heat pump for waste heat recovery. Results show that waste heat recovery reduces the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) from 1.59 to 1.50 - 1.46 and produces an Energy Reuse Factor (ERF) from 14.5% to 21%. Annual financial savings range from 34k to 49 k€, while equivalent CO2 emissions are reduced by 18%-26%. Evaluation of different extended heating schedules with early start results in the best overall performance, highlighting the importance of heating load profile optimization for better waste heat utilization.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2026
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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