Page 5 - Spring 2024
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targeted, as it is difficult to evenly distribute In order to address these challenges, Airsys,
cold air across the data centre. While many a market leading cooling solutions provider
data centre operators have addressed this and exhibitor at Data Centre World, has
through containment strategies, reducing pioneered the development of LiquidRack™ ,
the amount of space that requires cooling
an innovative cooling technology that utilises
by isolating different areas of the room does
liquid spray as the cooling agent:
not totally fix the problem. The energy usage
remains high, smaller spaces means less “LiquidRack™ is a liquid spray solution
computing capacity, and the system is also
designed for multiple types of digital data
highly susceptible to environmental factors.
infrastructures, such as cloud service,
telecommunication facilities and more.
Owing to these challenges, and the consistent
rise in data consumption, industry-wide Power Differing from immersion cooling, our
Usage Effectiveness (PUE) improvements have pioneering approach keeps the dielectric
halted.’ fluid moving, spraying directly onto the CPU.
Adopting a liquid spray cooling approach
By contrast, liquid cooling leverages the higher
significantly increases the heat transfer
thermal transfer properties of water to cool
coefficient in comparison to immersion
equipment. With water having a higher heat
cooling. Increasing the heat transfer
capacity than air, it is able to absorb more
coefficient allows the dielectric fluid being
heat before its own temperature rises, making
it ‘ a more effective medium for the job ‘. sprayed onto the CPU to be elevated up to 65
degrees Centigrade without compromising
The author points to the following performance of the CPU.”
advantages of liquid cooling:
These elevated fluid temperatures are seen
1. The process is more efficient, which
to eliminate the need for chillers, which can
drastically reduces the energy required to
be replaced by dry coolers in environments
cool the equipment.
with ambient temperatures up to 50 degrees
2. It is more compact than HVAC, which helps Centigrade. This means that there are
to liberate space. potential free-cooling applications in regions
such as the Middle East, where this has
3. By directly targeting specific areas, liquid
previously been difficult to achieve. In addition,
cooling ensures that each component
elevated water temperatures allow for heat
is operating within its ideal temperature
recovery, making the data centre effectively a
range, which extends the service life
of the equipment with performance net energy producer.
improvement benefits.
A further benefit identified is removal of the
4. There is potential to integrate heat uneven fluid flow that can result using other
exchange with nearby facilities - for methods of liquid cooling technology, which
example warm water from the cooling can cause server reliability issues:
system can be directed to heat adjacent
buildings. “Uneven flow can occur where there is a
mixture of different servers immersed or
This, however, is not the end of the debate if one or more servers are removed for
as the vendor view from Airsys (Reference:
maintenance, resulting in the dielectric fluid
Datacentre Solutions, Issue 0, 2024, p40-
following through the path of least resistance,
41) shows. The limitations of air cooling are
thus starving the CPU of the flow needed to
acknowledged, but so are the limitations of
remove heat. Therefore, LiquidRack™ offers a
liquid cooling. The article states:
more reliable solution to preserve servers and
“Some data centres are already adopting maintain data centre uptime.”
liquid cooling, but the specific technology that
has so far been predominantly implemented The article concludes:
is immersion cooling. Although it is an
“Liquid cooling is the next step for the
efficient method in removing heat from
CPUs, the technology still has some reliance data centre industry to achieve its aims of
on mechanical cooling, which makes it less sustainability and net zero, and liquid spray
sustainable and limits the ability of the data cooling is the pioneering next step in the liquid
centre in moving closer to net zero.” cooling journey”.
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