The intensive use of data is driving massive changes around the world, both at an industrial and business level. As all this information has to be stored and processed in large data centers, they must assume a high cost in energy consumption, water use, environmental footprint, and others.
The servers hosted in data centers generate a large amount of heat and their efficient operation depends, to a large extent, on being able to cool the equipment. But the cooling process also consumes a lot of energy.
If we do not refrigerate the servers and only depend on their systems of injection and extraction of air, these would end up damaging and, surely, some other component would be burned by the heat produced. Therefore, as we can imagine, ensuring the optimal operating conditions of a server is a critical task that requires large investments in cooling systems and that, over time, has evolved a lot and has opened the doors of a new generation of sustainable data centers.
So, the cooling by immersion allows reducing the size of the data center to only a fraction of what it would be if we had to perform its cooling by traditional air.
Context
To give us an idea of ​​what we are talking about, 2% of the carbon dioxide emissions generated worldwide are linked to the technology sector, a sector that is capable of consuming about 1% of the global electric power. With this context, and taking into account that our computing needs increase exponentially, it is necessary to look for alternative sources of energy (betting on renewable energies) and optimize cooling by betting on much more innovative solutions than conventional air systems.
Beyond air conditioning
The search for efficiency and energy saving has opened many lines of research that aim to make the data centers much greener and, above all, sustainable. Efficient air conditioning systems have been developed that are capable of saving around 90% of the electric power necessary for their operation: a substantial saving that would reduce the carbon footprint of the technology industry and, therefore, of cloud computing.
In this way, the latest generation of fluids developed by 3M is revolutionizing the data center sector with its solutions for cooling through immersion in liquids.
How does it work?
In single-phase immersion cooling, the fluid has a higher boiling point and remains in its liquid phase throughout the process. The electronic components are immersed in a non-conductive bath filled with 3M Novec liquid. The heat of the components is transferred to the fluid and the heated fluid is pumped to a heat exchanger, where it is cooled and reconnected to the bath.
The 3M scientists also use a passive two-phase immersion cooling process, where the component racks are immersed in a Novec bath.
The most efficient methods of cooling by immersion in the liquid can help improve the energy efficiency of a data center by up to 97% since they eliminate the need for chillers and air conditioning units that entail high energy costs.
With this process, a data center can become more efficient and end up servicing more clients with less effort.
Reusing Heat
While we have focused on the optimization of the cooling systems of data centers, the heat generated can also be exploited. Yes, the heat dissipated by the servers can be used and reinvested in applications that can save us energy; The simplest and closest thing is to use the heat in heating systems or to heat water in the same facilities in which the data center is located, but this heat can also be extended to other users. The heat dissipated in some data centers can be reused to cause energy savings in third parties and make these data centers sustainable to exert their influence beyond their physical facilities.
All this brings the opportunity of helping save the Planet while having a more efficient and faster data center.
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