Absorption chiller waste heat design guide
4th August 2026
USA: Johnson Controls has produced an absorption chiller design guide to convert waste heat from data centres and reduce cooling electrical demand by up to 44%.
The blueprint helps data centre operators convert the energy typically lost as waste heat from on-site power generation into productive cooling, reducing cooling-related electric demand and allocating more power available for AI workloads.
According to Johnson Controls, in a 1GW-scale AI factory, those efficiency gains could support up to 97MW of additional AI computing capacity.
“Johnson Controls helps transform recovered heat into useful work through combined heat and power and absorption cooling solutions, enabling AI factories to scale more efficiently while reducing strain on the grid and delivering value to local communities,” explained Austin Domenici, Johnson Controls president, global data centre solutions.
The reference design demonstrates how operators can convert cooling efficiency gains into additional AI computing capacity or reduce cooling system CO2 emissions by up to 43%. It also claims to be able to achieve a PUE as low as 1.23 with zero on-site water use.
“A vast amount of heat produced by on-site power generators is essentially thrown away – dissipated into the air. We see a huge opportunity when that energy is put to work instead,” said vice president and chief sustainability and external relations officer Katie McGinty.
Download the absorption chiller guide and other design guides covering air-cooled and water-cooled chillers here.
