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Condair provides evaporative cooling for data center energy savings
Thu, 13th May 2021
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Over the last several decades, society has made remarkable advances in the world of internet technology. Today, nearly all aspects of life have integrated some form of these advances into their everyday operations, whether its data management, online interactions, commerce, security systems, or even machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Due to the ever-increasing demand in processing power required to fulfill these activities, companies and government entities are faced with a tough challenge to ensure reliability for their respective IT products.

As a result, significant investments are being made to create robust servers housed in data centers and data facilities to ensure sufficient reliability and continuity of operations that involve IT technology.

While data centers come in different sizes and configurations, and fulfill a large array of needs, they all share a common problem; they generate a significant amount of heat. If the heat generated by the data centers is left untreated, this can lead to equipment failure, unplanned downtime and loss of revenue.

Data centers around globe have turned to Condair who over the last 70 years have evolved as the premier provider of evaporative cooling and adiabatic technologies for these critical applications.

Cooling systems become critical to ensuring proper function and profitability of a data center. Energy and money spent maintaining the indoor environment for data centers reduce profitability of the facility.

The challenge is then to integrate a reliable HVAC solution that can regulate the indoor environment while also delivering the lowest possible operating costs to optimize profits.

With ever evolving data center performance metrics and higher goals for energy savings, the push for greater energy efficiency is creating a need for higher performing HVAC options.

A relatively new cost-reducing trend employed by large businesses is locating data centers in areas with colder climates. However, because cold air holds less moisture than warm air, low RH becomes an issue. Data centers then turn towards evaporative cooling and adiabatic technologies to cool and humidify their indoor environments.

Evaporative cooling is an adiabatic process that introduces liquid water directly into the air stream. As the water evaporates, it draws heat from the air to drive the phase change from liquid to vapor.

Evaporative cooling and adiabatic technologies such as Condair's ME Series Evaporative Humidifier and Cooler or DL Series Hybrid Humidifier have the benefit of humidifying and cooling the airstream without adding thermal energy (heat).

In comparison to traditional isothermal humidification technologies that use electricity or natural gas, etc. as the energy source for phase change, adiabatic systems, such as high-pressure sprays or evaporative systems, use the energy that is already in the air stream.

Reducing mechanical cooling requirements offers significant energy savings. In climates where direct evaporative cooling in the ventilation air stream is not practical due to warm and humid outdoor conditions, a different approach called indirect evaporative cooling can be employed. Indirect evaporative cooling involves placing an evaporative cooler into the exhaust airstream.

This air is then cooled as much as possible and directed through an air-to-air heat exchanger which pre-cools incoming supply air. The moist air is then exhausted from the building. The result is a reduction in mechanical cooling requirements without adding moisture to the building.

Assuming this trend continues, investing in a reliable, cost effective HVAC system is key, and as important as maintaining an ideal indoor environment that minimizes risk and allows servers to reach their full potential.

To learn more about Condair, click here.