DATA CENTRES
Keeping cool and
saving water
Steve Dawson of Guardian Water Treatment, looks at how water-based cooling systems can be better managed to ensure operational efficiency – and certainty – as the mercury rises.
A
t the time of writing, we are coming out of the hottest summer on record, and, unfortunately, it seems that this is
more than just a blip – four of the five warmest summers have happened since 2003. Apart from being a sad indicator of global warming, hotter temperatures pose a problem to essential infrastructure such as data centres, putting strain on energy and water usage and adding cost to what are already extremely expensive buildings to run. When many of the data centres in the UK
were built they were designed to perform at ‘normal’ temperatures, i.e. no hotter than around 32 degrees in the summer. If summer 2022 is anything to go by, however, 32 degrees is no longer a satisfactory upper limit, meaning older data centres are under pressure and more likely to suffer outages. Keeping data centres cool is an important part of preventing downtime, but, outside of the IT equipment
18 November 2022 •
www.acr-news.com
itself, this process is the next biggest consumer of energy.
Rising electricity bills are not the only concern here – having ‘data’ at your fingertips also uses a surprising amount water. According to researchers at Imperial College London, for every gigabyte (GB) of data consumed, there is water footprint of up to 200 litres. To put this in perspective, in 2018, the
average person used 2.9GB of data per month, by 2020 this had increased to 4.5GB. As such, the developed world is using water at an excessive rate, with the latest statistics from the United Nations stating that industrialised nations consume 80% of the water available for humans. While you might feel ‘safe’ in a traditionally wet UK, drought is likely to affect us all in the future and by 2025, it is predicted that half the world’s population will live in ‘water-stressed’ locations. We need data centres, but we have to find
ways to improve operational efficiency while being mindful of wastage.
The cooling tower conundrum Cooling towers, which rely solely on
evaporative cooling, are often chosen for larger data centres as they are the most effective and energy efficient option. From a water wasting perspective, however, they do not stack up so favourably. To improve water wastage, utilising
rainwater and recycling water will improve sustainability credentials. Bleed recovery
Download the ACR News app today
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44
