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Photos: Five unusual data centres

Hydrogen-fuelled, underground and bundled in a shipping container…

Tags: green it, fuel cell, data centre

By Gemma Simpson

Published: 25 July 2007 13:48 BST

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IT consultancy Comtec Enterprises has come up with the novel idea of using hydrogen fuel cells – developed by APC - as a back-up power supply for its green data centre.

A fuel cell converts chemical energy to electrical and thermal energy. The cells are supplied with hydrogen from stored and pressurised bottles via the pictured tubes. These pipes also extract water produced by the cells.

The mixture of hydrogen and oxygen from the air churns out the electrical energy needed to power the servers with three 10kW cells able to be installed in a single rack.

Photo credit: Tim Ferguson

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