REFRIGERANTS Cooling data centres
With the rapid evolution of AI, the demand for data centres has never been greater, but these behemoth buildings generate phenomenal amounts of heat. Aparajita Kapoor, general manager, stationary refrigeration, Honeywell Advanced Materials talks to ACR News about the challenges of cooling data centres.
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s data centres become more central to modern society and the demand increases for higher volumes of data, storage and processing around the world, excess heat becomes a top concern. Servers that process all this data require high energy and produce signifi cant heat. Without adequate cooling, these servers can overheat, throttle and slow down, or fail. Today, companies either use traditional air conditioning or use water for evaporative cooling. While it is cost eff ective, evaporative cooling uses millions of gallons of water. A large data centre can gobble up anywhere between 1 million and 5 million gallons of water a day — as much as a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people. As the demand on servers – and therefore the need for water consumption – increases, it raises serious concerns on the availability of water for local communities. As a result, many companies have started rethinking their data centre designs to move away from the heavy reliance on evaporative cooling. Multiple options are currently being adopted that use
There are many ways that cooling solutions can be designed to keep up with the
data centre’s expansion plans when you employ a hybrid liquid and air-cooling approach.
existing chiller, AC and heat exchanger designs that not only optimise cooling in data centres but do so in a more environmentally friendly manner by lowering carbon footprint, using less water, and using less energy. Not only do these systems not require the same level of water consumption, but they operate on refrigerant platforms which have, over time, become increasingly more effi cient with a lower global warming potential (GWP). Depending on the type of refrigerant system used, water consumption can be reduced by as much as 60—70%. Chiller and AC systems with Honeywell’s Solstice portfolio of
energy effi cient, low-GWP hydrofl uoroolefi n (HFO) refrigerants are commercially available and are being leveraged for data centre designs today. In addition to lowering water consumption in data centres, HFO systems enable low direct emissions as they have a low or ultralow GWP (<1), while also allowing low indirect emissions by ensuring system architectures have higher energy-effi ciencies. The move many companies are making to incorporate
refrigerant-based system designs is in itself an environmentally friendly option that is energy effi cient, reduces water consumption and keeps carbon footprint low. While there is no one-size-fi ts-all approach, a hybrid model which is a combination of air cooling, water cooling and refrigerant based cooling is gaining traction.
22 March 2024 •
www.acr-news.com Depending on the size and operating conditions of data
centres, cooling systems can account for up to 40% of total energy consumption, so in addition to optimising the design itself, it is also critical to choose technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Honeywell Solstice molecules have zero ozone depleting potential and reduced GWP, further reducing their environmental impact. This is especially important when considering that 2% of the world’s carbon emissions are produced by data centres. Compared to traditional HFC chillers, HFOs provide excellent
energy effi ciency with a 10% reduction in total carbon footprint . Data centres are generating excess heat due to increased
power densities and are currently consuming approximately 3% of global electricity. Energy-effi cient thermal management solutions are critical in tackling reducing energy consumption and operating costs. The move to combine water, air and refrigerant based cooling systems is an important initiative in this regard to optimise water and energy trade-off s. Many leading original equipment manufacturers are already supplying refrigerant based equipment to data centres. Honeywell has partnered with a range of companies over the years to off er their HFO refrigerants in chillers, to optimise data centre sustainability, resiliency, and operational performance. Moreover, the integration of HFO-based chillers in data
centres provides an opportunity to harness waste heat eff ectively. By recovering waste heat generated by the data centre, it can be redirected to power local communities. This transformation turns data centres into not just energy consumers but sustainable sources of energy. As the AI goldrush continues, demand for computing
power in data centres increases. Projections have estimated the generative AI market to reach US$126.5 billion by 2031, growing at a compound and annual growth rate of 32% from 2022 to 2031. AI applications use high-performance processors which require more power than traditional data centre processors leading to high-density issues and excess heat. To counter these new challenges, energy effi cient, low environmental impact data centre cooling is critical. There are many ways that cooling solutions can be designed to keep up with the data centre’s expansion plans when you employ a hybrid liquid and air-cooling approach. For example, a scalable approach to cooling solutions in data centres is designing the infrastructure with modularity in mind, where additional cooling units can be easily added or updated as the
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