The multifarious use of cow dung gets wider if the computer major HP's research finding is anything to go by.

While the use of this waste material as cooking fuel, manure and bio-gas is not new, it has the potential to generate power to run data centres, says a research by HP Labs.

In a research paper presented at the ASME International Conference on Energy Sustainability by HP Labs (the computer major HP's central research arm) shows that manure of cows can be used to generate waste-derived power, which will be supplied to data centres.

The research suggests that a farm of 10,000 dairy cows could fulfill the power requirements of a one-megawatt data centre (equivalent of a medium-sized data centre) and surplus power left over to support other needs on the farm.

"A medium-sized dairy farm with 10,000 cows produces about two lakh metric tonnes of manure per year. About, 70 per cent of the energy in the methane generated via anaerobic digestion could be used for data centre power and cooling, thus reducing the impact on natural resources," HP said.

Today, when the call for data centre efficiency is growing louder amid depleting non-renewable sources of energy, the move might present an alternative to the needs of enterprise.

HP researchers estimate that dairy farmers would break even within the first two years of using a system like this and then, earn roughly USD 2 million annually in revenue from selling waste-derived power to data centre customers.

"Using animal waste to generate power has been around for centuries...The new idea that we are presenting is to create a symbiotic relationship between farms and the IT ecosystem that can benefit the farm, the data centers and the environment," Tom Christian, principal research scientist, Sustainable IT Ecosystem Lab at HP said.