Data Centers

Data center temperatures vary depending on the servers and type of cooling system, but temperature swings outside ASHRAE or design standards could have serious performance implications. Downtime at data centers is potentially catastrophic and every precaution should be taken to eliminate, or at least minimize, this threat. Therefore, it is essential that data centers are equipped with efficient and reliable cooling equipment.

Frigel Group has received OCP Community Membership and will be part of the “Modular Data Center” group with the scope of collaborating on design and uses of modular solutions in power, cooling, IT, and all-in-one modules.

Primary interests in the Project include: improving the speed of data center deployment, reducing the environmental impact in data center construction, and improving data center efficiency in both power and cooling.

The most evolved free-cooling technologies

Free-cooling is a concept whereby ambient air is used for cooling when the ambient temperature is lower than the data hall air (direct free-cooling) or the chilled water (indirect free-cooling).

In hydronic solutions free-cooling starts when external conditions ensure even a minimum coverage of the thermal load requirements. Thanks to the application of modulating free-cooling to maximize the free external source, the percentage of free-cooling increases proportionally in relation to the temperature difference between the internal and external environments, thus notably reducing the contribution of mechanical cooling and maximizing overall system efficiency.

Free-cooling is even more effective with high water temperatures, ensuring maximized energy savings.

The ASHRAE standards with the new permitted operating parameters make it possible to work within the data center with higher temperatures, so the use of Free-Cooling and different cooling technologies compared with the traditional ones becomes even more advantageous.

Main Opportunities:

• Hybrid Dry Coolers
• Liquid coolers that use adiabatic cooling technology - already widely adopted and highly effective in high-temperature industrial applications - exploit the adiabatic cooling principle to extend the Free-Cooling operating range.
• In Hybrid Dry Coolers, adiabatic cooling is made possible by special adiabatic chamber with special aluminum fins which, thanks to optimum water distribution, lower the air temperature due to water evaporation.
• This means additional operating hours in Free-Cooling mode.
• Given the new ASHRAE ranges permitted, it will undoubtedly be even more advantageous in the future to use Hybrid Dry Coolers in Data Centers in applications at increasingly high temperatures as a back-up for cooling operations with chillers.