3. Rear door cooler
The acceptance rate is also very high, partly due to the renewed attention given to water cooling. If massive data center air conditioning systems were eliminated and replaced with new cooling methods that are closer to the equipment, the data center industry would likely operate much better. Educational backgrounds and individual desires to stand out may foster new cases, but the trade-off between cost and power availability will ultimately determine the outcome.
4. Evaporation or adiabatic cooling
While the scientific principles behind evaporative cooling are simple and increasingly popular, it remains novel to most data center operators. Adiabatic cooling achieves cooling by reducing the pressure of substances operating within a closed environment, causing them to boil like lava rising to the surface of a volcano, while wind carries away the high temperatures from the peak. Adiabatic cooling remains effective in warm, dry climates, significantly extending the period of “free cooling” throughout the year. Its main drawback is relatively high water consumption, but for the same cooling capacity, it still requires significantly less cooling water than a standard cooling tower.
5. Tight coupling or heat source cooling
Close-coupled cooling operates more efficiently by being close to the heat source. This isn’t new—ask any veteran mainframe operator or laptop designer. While close-coupled cooling is still “mainstream” in data centers, newer methods often perform better in meeting energy efficiency requirements and are gaining more attention. It works simply by consuming energy to blow large amounts of air into underfloor spaces or ductwork, and then drawing that air back to the air conditioning system.
More promising technologies include immersion cooling: completely submerging the server in mineral oil to achieve extremely high cooling efficiency with minimal energy consumption. But what will technicians think when dealing with servers covered inside and out by oil? Clearly, this cooling method is not suitable for all scenarios.