Use of air side economizer for data center thermal management

• Main Author: Kumar, Anubhav
• Published: Georgia Institute of Technology 2008
• Subjects: Fluent; Heat transfer; Cooling; Microprocessors; Data processing service centers Energy conservation; Energy conservation
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1853/24672

Sharply increasing power dissipations in microprocessors and telecommunications systems have resulted in significant cooling challenges at the data center facility level.Energy efficient cooling of data centers has emerged as an area of increasing importance in electronics thermal management. One of the lowest cost options for significantly cutting the cooling cost for the data center is an airside economizer. If outside conditions are suitable, the airside economizer introduces the outside air into the data center, making it the primary source for cooling the space and hence a source of low cost cooling. Full-scale model of a representative data center was developed, with the arrangement of bringing outside air.Four different cities over the world were considered to evaluate the savings over the entire year.Results show a significant saving in chiller energy (upto 50%).The limits of relative humidity can be met at the inlet of the server for the proposed design, even if the outside air humidity is higher or lower than the allowable limits.The saving in the energy is significant and justifies the infrastructure improvements, such as improved filters and control mechanism for the outside air influx.