Langson Energy, Inc. has announced the Gas Letdown Generator (GLG), a solution that can provide data centres with energy from natural gas to not only generate electricity but also provide valuable cooling for liquids or air from the pressure reduction.
The GLG utilises two forms of often wasted energy, the wasted kinetic energy at the PRV (pressure reduction valve), and the wasted cooling which decreases the temperature of a real gas that is allowed to expand freely at constant enthalpy (or adiabatic free expansion, which means that no heat is transferred to or from the gas, and no external work is extracted).
Data centres utilising liquid immersion cooling can further improve their efficiency by using a GLG instead of cooling towers that consume enormous amounts of water, need water treatment and maintenance or use dry cooler systems that are very inefficient and ineffective in warm climates, are very expensive, and consume power to operate. It is an economically viable solution to reduce energy demands at data centres with a nearby PRV.
