Save Cows And Save Ecosystem

The idea of using animal waste to generate energy has been around for centuries, with manure being used every day in remote villages to generate heat for cooking.

Now the researchers have found a way to combine dairy farm waste and the heat generated from data centers to create a sustainable ecosystem.

If an average dairy cow produces about 55 kg of solid waste each day, which adds to 20 metric tonnes annually – the weight of four adult elephants. For a medium-sized dairy farm of 10,000 cows, 200,000 metric tones of manure (equating to the weight of 40,000 elephants) is generated each year. Unmanaged livestock waste can create negative environmental impact (air pollution and ground water contamination); and the methane created through anaerobic digestion of manure has proven to be 21 times more damaging than carbon dioxide, aggravating climate change. Around 3.0 kilowatt-hours of electricity could be generated daily from the manure of one cow. Approximately 70% of the energy from the methane could be used for power and cooling, sufficient to power a medium-sized data center. The heat generated by the data center is channelled to increase the efficiency of anaerobic digestion of animal waste to produce methane, which can in turn be used to generate power for the data center.

This symbiotic relationship will resolve the waste problems of dairy farms as well as address the energy needs of modern data centers. The whole system operates in an economically and ecologically sustainable manner.