Cooling Technology of Data Center 

The rapid growth of data center construction has led to more and more equipments in the equipment room, in order to ensure a constant temperature and humidity environment in the data center. The power consumption of the data center will increase greatly, and the cooling system, power distribution system, UPS and generators will increase proportionally, which poses a major challenge to the data center energy consumption. So, what are the cooling technologies in the data center, and which are the future development directions? The answer will be found in this article.

Air cooling system

In the air-cooled system, half of the refrigerant circulation loops are located in the air conditioner of data center room, and the rest are located in the air-cooled condenser outdoors. The heat inside the equipment room is squeezed into the outdoor environment by using the circulating circuit of the refrigerant. The hot air transfers the heat to the evaporator coil and then to the refrigerant. The refrigerant with high temperature and high pressure is sent out by the compressor, and condenser then dissipates heat outdoors. The air-cooling system has lower energy efficiency and relies on the wind to directly dissipate heat. From the perspective of cooling, the main energy consumption is generated by compressors, indoor fans, and air-cooled condensers outdoors . Due to the concentrated arrangement of the outdoor unit, when the outdoor unit is fully turned on in summer, the local heat accumulation will be more severe, which will reduce the cooling efficiency and affect the use effect. Moreover, the noise of the air-cooled unit has a great influence on the surrounding environment and residents, and the energy saving is relatively low. Although the air-cooling system has low heat dissipation efficiency and high energy consumption, it is still the most widely used heat dissipation method in the data center.

Liquid cooling system

Air-cooled system has its inevitable shortcomings, so some data centers have begun to turn to liquid cooling, water-cooling is the most common systems. The water cooling system removes heat through the plate exchange, and the refrigeration effect is stable. An outdoor cooling tower or a dry cooler is required instead of a condenser for heat exchange. Water cooling eliminates the air-cooled outdoor unit and solves the noise problem, thus causing little influence on the environment. The water cooling system is more complicated and expensive, and the maintenance is difficult, but it can meet the cooling and energy saving requirements of large data centers. In addition to water cooling, there is oil cooling. The oil cooling system can further reduce energy consumption compared with water cooling. Oil-cooled system can solve dust problem and its energy consumption is much lower. Unlike water, oil is a non-polar substance that does not affect the electronic integrated circuit and does not damage the internal hardware of the server. However, liquid cooling system is rare in the market, and few data centers will adopt this approach. Because liquid cooling system requires filtration of the liquid to avoid problems such as contaminant build-up, excessive deposits and biological growth.