A Review of Current Status of Free Cooling in Datacenters
A Review of Current Status of Free Cooling in Datacenters
A Review of Current Status of Free Cooling in Datacenters
Research Paper
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: In this study, an overview of current status of the free cooling technologies applicable for datacenters had
Received 14 March 2016 been discussed, including airside economizers, waterside economizers, and heat pipe technology. By
Revised 12 October 2016 introducing the free cooling technologies, the compressor loading of refrigeration system can be partially
Accepted 14 October 2016
or completely relieved. Utilization of airside or waterside free cooling relies strongly on the ambient con-
Available online 20 October 2016
ditions, yet either airside free cooling or waterside free cooling may be integrated with other systems
such as absorption, solar system, adsorption, geothermal, evaporative cooling, and the like to extend
Keywords:
its performance. On the other hand, thermosiphon heat exchangers and pulsating heat pipes feature
Datacenter
Free cooling
unique characteristics to transfer heat at small temperature difference are quite promising for datacenter
Air economizers free cooling.
Water economizers Ó 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Heat pipe
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2016.10.093
1359-4311/Ó 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
H.M. Daraghmeh, C.-C. Wang / Applied Thermal Engineering 114 (2017) 1224–1239 1225
Nomenclature
AHU air handler unit NSIDC national snow and ice data center
ASHRAE American society of heating, refrigerating and air- PHP pulsating heat pipe
conditioning engineers PUE power usage effectiveness
CES cold energy storage RH relative humidity
COP coefficient of performance TS thermosiphon heat exchanger
CRAC computer room air conditioner US United States of America
CRAH computer room air handler UK United Kingdom
DX direct expansion UPA environmental protection agency
HE heat exchanger TES thermal energy storage
IBM international business machines corporation UPS uninterruptible power supply
ISMT integrated system of mechanical refrigeration and ther- VFD variable frequency drive
mosiphon
IT information technology
Fig. 3. The commonly used cold-aisle and hot-aisle containments in datacenter [28].
H.M. Daraghmeh, C.-C. Wang / Applied Thermal Engineering 114 (2017) 1224–1239 1227
A detailed listing and comparison of the most recent used econo- generated inside datacenter facilities can be removed when out-
mizers is tabulated in Table 4 and further discussions on relevant side colder air is brought into the datacenter directly. This strategy
studies will be addressed subsequently. had been widely employed by datacenters operators; in fact, as
much as 40% out of all free cooling economizers’ deployment takes
this form [8]. Many researchers had discussed the potential of
2. Airside economizers using free cooling economizers in data centers [29,30]. For exam-
ple, Lee and Chen [29] had numerically investigated the potential
Airside economization can be obtained through pumping colder saving of using direct airside free cooling economizers for 17 cli-
outside air into datacenters. In cold or mild climates, using outside mate zones. Their results showed a significant energy savings of
air cooling can lead to an extremely high efficiency, while it is not economizers used in mixed-humid, warm and warm-marine cli-
so usable in hot, humid and rapidly changing weather areas. Typ- mates zones, and it is comparatively inefficient in dry as well as
ical airside free cooling can be in forms of direct airside cooling, humid climate zones due to the need of high energy fans, humid-
indirect airside cooling, or evaporative cooling (direct, indirect, or ifiers, and dehumidifiers. The usage of these devices can offset
multi-stage). the benefits of free cooling. The results also showed that using a
well-controlled datacenter is essential since 2 °C drop in the indoor
2.1. Direct airside free cooling temperature reduced the energy savings by 2.8–8.5%. Siriwardana
et al. [30] studied the use of direct air economizers in different Aus-
Direct airside cooling is the simplest economization method tralian states with different climates. In some states the results
and it is what datacenter operators think of first. It is an effective showed substantial energy savings. In 2008, the Intel company
method to improve datacenter cooling system that takes advan- adopted the same strategy to launch a 10-megawatt (MW) data
tages of colder outside air. Typical direct airside economizer con- center, and reported a huge annual energy savings of USD 2.87 mil-
sists of air ducts and a set of fans, louvers, filters, vents, and lion [31]. In order to take use of outside air in low humidity areas
dampers. These components can effectively use outside air to and dry-hot areas, direct evaporative cooling had been used to cool
replace refrigeration cooling entirely or partially. Examples of data center facilities. An evaporative cooler consists of a large fan
direct air economizers are shown in Fig. 4(a) [10]. The heat that draws warm air through moisture filler. As the water in the
Table 2
Total annual utilization of direct airside free cooling of some European countries [3].
moisture filler evaporates, the air is cooled before entering the Table 3
datacenter [32]. The temperature can be controlled by adjusting Comparison between direct airside cooling and indirect airside cooling [39].
the airflow of the cooler and a schematic of this example is shown Type Direct airside cooling Indirect airside cooling
in Fig. 4(b) [33]. However, direct airside free cooling method has
Efficiency Refrigeration compression Lower efficiency due to one
some remarkable problems to be solved, such as climate change, cycle is not needed when the more heat exchanger between
air quality, high humidity, and maintenance issues. outside conditions are outdoor and indoor air
Udagawa et al. [34] conducted a study in Japan to compare favorable, but fan power will
free cooling-based systems with package type air conditioning increase as filters become
clogged
system. Their simulation considered different climate conditions
Capital Lower capital cost for These systems normally cost
on four several locations. They claimed that high-efficiency con- cost prefabricated systems more than direct airside
trol was attainable and the coefficient of performance (COP) tends cooling
to increase only when the outside temperature is low. Oró et al. Operating Higher energy cost for Lower operating and
cost geographies with high maintenance cost since the
[3] studied the potential use of direct air free cooling combined
temperature and humidity outdoor air is isolated
with thermal energy storage strategy (TES). The study was per- Higher maintenance cost due completely by air to air
formed in five different European cities subject to different cli- to filter replacement exchanger, which results in
mates conditions in association with ASHRAE recommended longer full and partial
guidelines of total annual hours. As tabulated in Table 2, the sim- economizer mode hours
in the design can enhance the cooling efficiency significantly and schematic of the cooling system designed by NSIDC. Results
relax limitation of outdoor wet bulb temperatures. Adding this showed substantial energy savings and reduction in PUE as com-
sensible cooling is essential when the outside humidity is rela- pared to typical CRAC system. The CRAC system had an annual
tively high. It can be easily obtained by mixing the outside air with average PUE of 2.01 while the NSIDC’s new system had an average
the exhaust air from the conditioned air before bringing it to the PUE of 1.55 [42].
evaporative cooler. Obviously, heat exchanging is possible since
the outside temperature is much higher than the exhaust temper- 3. Waterside economizers
ature. Multistage evaporative cooler is designed to get the maxi-
mum possible benefits accompanied with improved system Waterside economization can be obtained through directly
performance. For example, it can be used to operate even when pumping water into datacenters or indirectly with the help of cool-
the inlet air temperature is lower than the wet-bulb temperature ing towers or dry coolers. The working principle of this economizer
of the outside air. Hence, it can be used in high humidity areas. depends on using cooling towers to precool partially or completely
In 2011, National Snow and Ice Data center (NSIDC) designed a the return water in a chilled water loop [4]. In essence, this econ-
new cooling system consists of air handling unit (AHU) powered omization process requires a changeover from free cooling mode to
by a 7.5-kW (10-horsepower) fan motor via a variable frequency mechanical cooling mode to achieve the required heat rejection.
drive (VFD), eight multi-stage indirect evaporative cooling air con- According to Brown [43], water economizers are considered as
ditioners, along with hot aisle containment design. Fig. 6 shows a one of the best practices in reducing power usage effectiveness
Table 4
Representive researches in association with free cooling.
Fig. 10. Free water cooling system combined with solar cooling cycle [47].
(PUE) to 1.5. Generally, waterside free cooling economizer can be companies used direct waterside free cooling for their commercial
categorized into three designs: direct waterside cooling system, products. Based on the report of IBM, such a system can remove
cooling-tower system, and integrated dry cooler-chiller system, 60% heat from a 33 kW high density rack [44]. Yet James and
and their detailed implementations and operational principles Rubenstein [45] invented a geothermal cooling mechanism, where
are given below. data center facilities were cooled through a thermally conductive
interface with some heat pipes that could be buried beneath the
3.1. Direct waterside cooling system earth for heat dissipation. This mechanism is depicted in Fig. 7.
The usage of such heat pipes can transfer the heat from datacenter
Direct waterside free cooling system is widely used since it is facilities to the earth without additional need for electrical power
comparatively much more efficient than airside free cooling. Many consumption. The design concept, of course, can be slightly modi-
Fig. 13. ISMT for datacenter application proposed by Suenaga and Ichimura [53].
1234 H.M. Daraghmeh, C.-C. Wang / Applied Thermal Engineering 114 (2017) 1224–1239
contaminants in the outside air will accumulate in the heat datacenter economizers being used, water-side economizers are
exchanger over time. Accordingly, it requires frequent mainte- the most widely used in datacenters [48]. Moreover, water-side
nance. Furthermore, cooling towers can be operated only in cooling systems are commonly used in large datacenter systems,
relative cold and mild climates in which the corresponding wet- suggesting enormous requirements of gigantic water supply. Miller
bulb temperature of outside air is low enough. Note that the idea [49] mentioned that a 15 MW datacenter can consume as much as
of integration of absorption can be easily switched to adsorption 360,000 gallons of water per day. Hence it may raise serious con-
system (either solid adsorption or liquid adsorption). Adsorption cerns of the shortage of water supply and suggested that cooling
systems can further remove all the fluid machineries, yielding a methods in association with air-side free cooling may be more
smaller PUE. responsible as far as environment is concerned [49].
3.3. Integrated dry cooler-chiller system (water to air dry coolers) 4. Heat pipe technology
Dry cooler is a fin-and-tube heat exchanger that is used to cool For effective removal of heat transfer and shorter distance
the circulated hot water from datacenter when the outside temper- transportation, some recent studies adopted heat pipe technology
ature is low enough. Dry cooler can be used to circulate chilled for thermal management of the datacenter. Using heat pipe heat
water in the CRAH to bypass the packaged chiller with same oper- exchanger such as thermosiphon can help to minimize the thermal
ational principles such as aforementioned cooling tower cycle as load on traditional cooling system as well as reducing greenhouse
shown in Fig. 11(a), or it can be connected with a second external gas emission. Note that heat pipes feature some unique character-
fin-and-tube heat exchanger to cool condenser water in the CRAC istics such as passive operation and extremely high effective ther-
unit as shown in Fig. 11(b). Dry cooler can be used as a partial mal conductivity (still in function even when the temperature
mode operation. Apparently, the dry cooler is connected in series difference is small between indoor and outdoor) which makes it
to the packaged chiller unit and it can be incorporated with evap- quite perfect for some thermal managements. Qian et al. [50] intro-
orative cooling to chill water in dry locations [10,40]. However, this duced heat pipe cooling system as the free cooling source, which
kind of economization system is not suitable for all year operation was implemented in Beijing, China and was operated when the
since it requires regularly switching to the traditional DX cooling outside temperature is lower than that of environmental set tem-
system. Meanwhile, according to ‘‘green grid 2011” survey about perature. By introducing heat pipe heat exchanger, they reported a
significant energy saving of 38.9%. Samba et al. [51] presented and geometric parameters on the performance. The results showed
experimental investigations with thermosiphon loop as shown in that cooling capacity and circulation flow rate increased with the
Fig. 12. The n-pentane was used as working fluid and different riser of thermosiphon diameter and air flow rate but decreased
working fluids filling ratios were tested. The optimal filling ratio with the tube length. Tian et al. [59] proposed a cooling solution
value obtained from the results was about 9.2% which corresponds for high density data centers based on the least dissipation theory
to the minimum operating temperature. The maximum heating and property matched heat exchange principle. The cooling system
load of the telecommunication equipment with and without ther- is a combination between internally cooled rack having two-stage
mosiphon loop was about 250 W and 600 W respectively, meaning heat pipe loops and a combined water loop with some serially con-
that the heating load of the equipment with thermosiphon loop nected cold sources as shown in Fig. 16. The proposed combined
can be significantly reduced. Jouhara and Meskimmon [52] con- cooling system could help eliminating the undesired mixing of
ducted a case study in the UK about using heat-pipe technology hot and cold air, thereby yielding a uniform distribution of indoor
as solution for the high energy cost datacenters. They constructed temperature. A comparative measurement was performed to vali-
a theoretical model based on the established, proven performance date the effectiveness of the system. The results showed an
characteristics of heat-pipe technologies and the weather data for a improved indoor thermal environment with an annual cooling cost
typical region in the UK. Their results showed appreciably potential reduction by approximately 46%.
energy savings of up to 75% by employing heat pipe based free
cooling solution. Currently, heat pipe cooling technology used in
datacenters can be classified into three parts: namely integrated
system of mechanical refrigeration and thermosiphon (ISMT), cold
energy storage system (CES) and pulsating heat pipe (PHP). Further
details upon these technologies are addressed in the following.
Fig. 17. Cold energy storage system (CES) using heat pipe proposed by Wu et al. [60] and Singh et al. [61].
H.M. Daraghmeh, C.-C. Wang / Applied Thermal Engineering 114 (2017) 1224–1239 1237
amount of working fluid. Through this arrangement, the PHPs are heat transfer performance of the PHP. Lu and Jia [63] proposed a
able to operate subject to expansion of vapor slug at the evaporator rack cooling system combined with pulsating heat pipe. The sche-
and contraction in the condenser with unevenly distributed liquid matic diagram of the system is shown in Fig. 19. They had experi-
slugs and vapor plugs within the whole tube. Unlike the conven- mentally studied the influence of start-up performance of
tional heat pipes that make use of the capillary wick structure to pulsating heat pipe, influence of heating load of the server in the
complete the flow circulation, the wickless design of PHP signifi- rack, and the influence of chilled air velocity. The result showed
cantly eases the capital cost of the manufacturing process and it that the start-up of PHP makes the temperature lower and the tem-
is quite effective for larger size operation/circulation. In addition, perature distribution more uniform in the rack. Comparing to the
the PHPs also hold many superior features such as high effective conventional cooling system, the cooling system combined with
thermal conductivity, flexibility, large maximum heat transfer, PHP could reduce the temperature of some hot spots from
and long distance transportation capability. Hence it is especial 36.7 °C to 32.9 °C. The higher heating power produced the shorter
viable for future possible implementation of heat pipe alternatives start-uptime and the faster heat transfer. In our laboratory, we also
in datacenter application. Most of these recent studies focused on conduct similar experiments to replace traditional thermosiphon
the factors that would influence the start-up phenomenon and heat pipe by PHP as schematically shown in Fig. 20. With the same
Fig. 18. Schematic of data center power shaving framework that exploits UPS/TES tanks equipped in data center proposed by Zheng et al. [62].
Fig. 19. Experimental setup of rack cooling system based on pulsating heat pipe [63].
1238 H.M. Daraghmeh, C.-C. Wang / Applied Thermal Engineering 114 (2017) 1224–1239
Acknowledgements
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