Within a brief period, data center refrigeration has increasingly been understood as a key aspect of data center design. While these structures are particularly technologically intricate, their safe and efficient operation depends on a number of sophisticated factors at the intersection of engineering, infrastructure design, energy management, and security.
In this context, designing cooling for data centers represents an essential aspect: the right cooling ensures equipment runs safely and without interruption, while also avoiding humidity and condensation issues. But its impact goes beyond that: data center refrigeration is also crucial for reducing data centers’ energy bills, as well as their environmental impact.
As a rule, data centers are recommended to operate between 21 to 24°C (70 and 75°F), although new strategies with energy efficiency as a priority are pushing for warmer temperatures. In order to maintain favourable conditions, a variety of factors must be acknowledged, all while designing data center refrigeration solutions that are scalable, efficient from an energy point of view and easy to maintain and manage.
As energy efficiency concerns around data centers grow, the right data center refrigeration solutions can make a difference.
What is data center refrigeration?
Data Center refrigeration refers to the technologies in charge of ensuring the right temperature ranges are maintained in data centers to guarantee the proper functioning and longevity of IT equipment
Efficient data center cooling is critical for data center infrastructure, as high temperatures and humidity levels are damaging for IT equipment. This is particularly true considering the IT equipment itself generates heat, which must be dissipated correctly.
How does data center cooling work?
The right data center cooling system is the result of careful planning and design, advanced technology, and ongoing monitoring that ensures energy efficiency aligns with equipment reliability.
Generally speaking, data center cooling relies on removing the heat generated by IT equipment in order to maintain a stable environment in terms of temperature and humidity.
In order to do so, several aspects can be understood as being part of data center refrigeration:
- Airflow management good practices involve a mix of advanced technologies and the design of the actual physical spaces and equipment used in the data center. Among the key strategies is the creation of hot and cold containment corridors through placing server racks in alternating rows, so that hot and cold air mixing is minimized. Proper management also involves adjusting cooling loads to IT equipment, and employing computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to design adequate airflow practices for the facility.
- Automated monitoring systems and preventive maintenance solutions that detect potential problems and solve them to avoid downtime and improve efficiency. In this context, DCIM (Data Center Infrastructure Management) stands out as crucial tools for real-time monitoring. Measuring PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) on a regular basis also represents a key measure to ensure proper operations and improve efficiency.
- Cooling components (like cooling units, data center chillers or heat exchangers) are at the heart of data center refrigeration solutions. The specific choice of solution greatly impacts the actual components used to provide refrigeration, as described below.
While the aspects mentioned above serve as a blueprint of how data center refrigeration works, best practices are evolving to accommodate the growing need to prioritize efficiency, as well as ensuring data center redundancy.
From complying with ASHRAE’s standards to emerging techniques, like free cooling, waste heat recovery or direct-to-chip cooling, new horizons are opening up when it comes to how cooling for data centers works.
3 key data center refrigeration systems and technologies
1. Air cooling
It’s based on circulating cool air throughout the data center to remove the heat produced by the hardware via specialized equipment like CRAC and CRAH.
Air-based data center refrigeration also greatly relies on proper airflow management, including the creation of hot and cold air corridors.
Adequate for smaller data centers and the go-to technique in the past, air cooling is increasingly replaced by more efficient alternatives especially for larger, power-intensive facilities and those placed in warmer climates.
2. Free cooling
This cooling method employs external, naturally cool environmental conditions to reduce the need for mechanical cooling (data center chillers). As such, outdoor air, water sources, or other natural coolants are employed to minimize the use of conventional cooling mechanisms and thus minimize energy use.
This method is restricted to data center locations where these natural cooling resources are available, and typically requires backup data center refrigeration solutions.
3. Liquid cooling
Liquid cooling techniques are based on the fact that liquids present a higher thermal conductivity and specific heat capacity than air. This means they can absorb and carry away more heat per unit volume compared to air. The result is more efficient data center refrigeration, as well as cooling solutions that are able to handle higher equipment densities, thus supporting the rise of hyperscale data centers.
The two key approaches to liquid cooling for data centers today include:
- Liquid immersion cooling: based on submerging IT equipment into dielectric fluids, which are in charge of absorbing the heat and thus reducing its temperature.
- Direct-to-chip cooling: implies circulating dielectric fluids directly to processing chips or motherboard components, which typically produce the most heat in equipment.
Energy efficiency in data center refrigeration systems
From data center connectivity to key strategic location, a number of crucial aspects are currently on the table when it comes to data center design. However, energy efficiency stands out as a particularly important aspect of modern data centers.
In fact, in warmer climates, data center cooling can involve 33% of energy demand in a data center. This means strategies to reduce energy demand can have an important impact on any center’s overall energy consumption.
Tech giants like Google have already focused their attention on data center efficiency. This company’s strategy is a testament to the diverse approaches that can yield positive results when it comes to minimizing power demand related to cooling. In their case, Google claims their data centers are, on average, 1.8 times more efficient in terms of energy use compared to other infrastructures. Google’s strategy involves allowing temperatures of up to 27°C, employing free cooling techniques and building specialized equipment designed for energy efficiency.
But the paths for efficient cooling are many. Today, the quest of data center refrigeration systems aiming at top efficiencies and sustainability means exploring new approaches in liquid cooling such as direct-to-chip strategies, as well as the use of natural resources (from geothermal cooling to evaporative cooling) for free cooling.
Additionally, the rise of the AI data center emerges as a key strategy for improving facility efficiency. Advanced technologies are increasingly focusing on energy optimization via dynamic cooling adjustments, as well as optimized resource allocation and automation. For instance, smart temperature controls are able to reduce heat output and cooling usage.
Furthermore, real-time monitoring is facilitating data center optimization thanks to the capacity to make timely adjustments.
With increased digitization across the globe and the surge of artificial intelligence, data center demand is expected to continue rising. While the IEA estimates data centers account for 1% of global energy consumption, investment trends and the rise of hyperscale, power-intensive data centers imply this figure could rise quickly unless data center efficiency is put on the spot.
The right data center refrigeration solutions today are tailored to each facility’s specific use and needs, and leverage state-of-the-art thermal engineering to provide sustainable and cost-effective cooling.
At a time when innovative cooling solutions are flourishing, it’s key to rely on the right partners to design data center refrigeration that meets each project’s needs. From adaptive cooling that adjusts to real-time cooling needs, to harnessing renewable energy resources and joining district heating infrastructure for developing circular economies: the possibilities for enhanced energy efficiency are many, but must be made to match each facilities’ requirements and potential.
At ARANER, we are committed to putting our thermal engineering expertise to work to devise the most efficient data center refrigeration solutions for each project. Discover our data center cooling solutions and get in touch with us to learn more about how we can help you.
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