Importance of cooling in Data Centers

May 10, 2021 | Blog

Data centers play a major role in shaping the world around us and have become an integral part of our day-to-day lives. Computers in any data center work 24/7 at high rates and consume a lot of electricity. Due to high power consumption and non-stop functioning, they tend to get exceptionally hot which harms the performance with frequent failures and increased downtime.

The absence of a proper data center cooling system can cause a loss of valuable information that can have a sizeable impact on any company especially those driven by data. As a rule, the more the servers placed in a data center, the higher the temperature can reach. And, if temperature shoots up beyond a permissible point, the servers will stop performing at the peak, and at the worst, they could even burn out.

This is why cooling plays such a crucial role in any data center. This advocates the need for sophisticated and robust cooling systems to make computers and servers in a data center work uninterruptedly and at their peak.

Data Centre Cooling System Options:

There are multiple ways to cool data centers, depending on the size, computer capacity that must be cooled, regional energy costs, water availability, data load, and density. Popular options include:

Water-cooled chiller plant – includes chiller system, pumps, cooling tower water treatment, and plate/frame heat exchanger in series with the chiller

Air-cooled chiller plant – includes chiller system and pumps

Direct evaporative cooling – without mechanical refrigeration, also referred to as “swamp cooling”

If you compare, water cooling with air cooling, you may find air cooling a more popular option but water cooling is a better and more cost-effective option. The air has poor heat conductivity, meaning that the amount of energy required to chilling down air to the required temperatures to remove the heat and move it is becoming somewhat expensive. Water has much more capacity to remove heat than air and can therefore be far more effective to cool hotspots if it’s engineered and implemented correctly. Surprisingly, water-cooled systems can also reduce water consumption. Because the water used in a power plant to generate the additional power required by the air system needs is greater than the amount of water that would be used locally by a water-cooled system.

The benefits of water cooling systems include:

Tenfold increase in server density,

Much less energy required for cooling,

Less time for production and return on capital,

Increased infrastructure reliability,

No need for re-characterizing air flows before moves, adds, or changes,

Much improved work environment (noise reduction).

In reality, cooling towers do not keep things cool as much as they reject heat, which they do by transferring heat from the water source to the atmosphere through the process of evaporation (latent) and sensible heat transfer, thereby reducing the water temperature. The industries use cooling water for various jobs and, as a result, there are also various types of cooling towers.

A properly chosen and maintained cooling tower can help organizations avoid problems in their operation. Choices must be made based on size, efficiency, dynamics, and other factors.

Scale and Bio-Removal System from Cet-Enviro:

Our Scale and Bio-Removal System (SBR) provides non-chemical treatment of cooling towers to get rid of cooling tower problems like biofouling, scaling, and corrosion.

Cooling system water quality directly affects the reliability and operating cost of cooling towers in data centers. The SBR solution is a fully automatic online technology that continuously cleans cooling tower water without any chemicals and increases the cooling performance.

Also, learn about the importance of energy management systems in cooling towers

Advantages with SBR are:

100% savings on chemical costs

20-40% decrease in water usage

5-15% low energy consumption

Environment Friendly

The sole purpose of data center cooling technology is to maintain environmental conditions suitable for information technology equipment (ITE) operation. In most data centers, the operators expect the cooling system to operate continuously and reliably, and with SBR technology, you can be well assured of your cooling system working at its optimal performance.

Automatic Condenser Cleaning System for Chillers – the ultimate system to keep the condenser tubes in chillers free of fouling 24/7.