The University of Edinburgh is trialling a system to test if waste heat from a large computing facility can be stored in disused mine workings and used to warm homes with heat pumps.
The large amounts of energy needed to power the University of Edinburgh’s Advanced Computing Facility (ACF) could be recycled to heat at least 5,000 households in Scotland’s capital.
ACF is home to the ‘national supercomputer’, used for research such as national climate modelling and health data modelling. The facility currently releases up to 70GWh of excess heat per year.
The £2.6m feasibility study will examine how the water in old mine workings near the computing facility could be used to heat homes.
The process of cooling the supercomputers would be augmented to transfer the captured heat into the mine water – up to a maximum temperature of 40 deg C. This would be transported by natural groundwater flow in the mine workings, and made available for homes via heat pump technology.
‘Using waste heat could be a game changer’
The university said that, if successful, the study could provide a global blueprint for converting abandoned flooded coal, shale and mineral mine networks into underground heat storage.
A quarter of UK homes sit above former mines. This initiative means that potentially seven million households could have their heating needs met this way, researchers say.
Lead academic on the project, Professor Christopher McDermott, from the University of Edinburgh’s School of Geosciences, said: “This project opens up the potential for extracting heat stored in mine water more broadly. Most disused coal mines are flooded with water, making them ideal heat sources for heat pumps.
"With more than 800,000 households in Scotland in fuel poverty, bringing energy costs down in a sustainable way is critical, and using waste heat could be a game changer.”
The Edinburgh Geobattery project is led by Edinburgh-based geothermal company TownRock Energy with industry and academic partners from Scotland, the US and Ireland.
