Skip to main content

One of the world's most powerful supercomputers could one day heat your home — UK researchers plan to use abandoned coal mines to bring warmth to millions of households

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support

UK researchers are testing a groundbreaking system to repurpose waste heat from a supercomputing facility, potentially providing warmth to millions of homes. 

The system, a first in the UK, aims to store excess heat generated by the University of Edinburgh's Advanced Computing Facility (ACF) in disused mine workings. The ACF, housing the national supercomputer, currently emits up to 70 GWh of waste heat annually, a figure expected to increase to 272 GWh with the installation of the government's forthcoming Exascale supercomputer.

The £2.6 million feasibility study will investigate how to harness the water in old mine workings to heat homes. The cooling process for the supercomputers will be adapted to transfer heat into the mine water, which will then be distributed to households via heat pump technology.

Heating up to 7 million homes

If successful, this study could provide a global blueprint for repurposing abandoned coal, shale, and mineral mine networks into underground heat storage systems. With a quarter of UK homes built over former mines, up to seven million households could benefit from this approach. 

The Edinburgh Geobattery project is being led by geothermal company TownRock Energy, in collaboration with industry and academic partners from Scotland, the US, and Ireland. The University of Edinburgh, the project's lead research partner, is contributing £500k in funding towards its net zero goals. The project has also received a £1 million grant from Scottish Enterprise and a $1 million grant from the US Department of Energy.

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 coalmines 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."

More from TechRadar Pro



via Hosting & Support
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Web Hosting
Remote IT Support
Sites & Socials

Popular posts from this blog

How to watch Vigil season 3 online from anywhere – it's *FREE*

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support Watch Vigil season 3 for free on BBC iPlayer (UK) Use NordVPN to watch BBC iPlayer when abroad The first two of the six episodes arrive on Sunday, August 30 After uncovering the dark secrets of drone warfare technology in the Middle East in season 2, Vigil season 3 will see DCI Amy Silva (played by Suranne Jones) and DS Kirsten Longacre (played by Game of Thrones star Rose Leslie) come together to investigate the murder of a covert British Special Forces operative at a remote Arctic search station in a Russian enclave. From high-speed car chases and explosions to tense, gun-packed standoffs, the season 3 trailer tells us that the new season is going to be bigger, more intense, and higher-stakes than anything the duo has handled before. Plus, creator and writer Tom Edge has already hinted that Amy and Kirsten will be looking to avoid an international confr...
Post a Comment
Read more

AI tools are making social engineering attacks even more convincing, and I fear that this is only the beginning

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support Nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit were brought crashing into the 21st century in December 2024 with their latest adventure, Vengeance Most Fowl . The film challenges our growing dependence on smart technology in the form of a robotic garden gnome, built by Wallace to support his gardening business, which is then hacked by the Kubrick-esque Feathers McGraw for his own nefarious purposes. One of the more interesting but less commented on parts of the film shows Gromit cautiously entering his house and being greeted by what he thinks is Wallace’s reassuring voice, only to be confronted with Feathers and the robotic gnome. Technology’s ability to mimic linguistic patterns, to clone a person’s voice and understand and respond to questions has developed dramatically in the last few years. This has not gone unnoticed by the world’s criminals and scammers, with the result that social engineering attacks are not only on the rise but are more sophisticated a...
Post a Comment
Read more