Commercial HVAC
Data centers all around the world generate massive amounts of heat in course of data management and processing and demand a proper commercial HVAC in order to avoid over-heating. Nowadays data centers are essential for an array of different business, who simply cannot do without. And the demand for IT performance is constantly growing. Trends such as cloud technologies and big data computing, as well as the increasing use of multimedia services by private households, have led to a significant increase in the number of servers, storage and network infrastructures in the data centers in recent years. Thus the power consumption in data centers has boosted as well. Additionally, the energy prices are increasing considerably, thus data centers demand from businesses more and more investments in commercial HVAC. The days when energy costs compared to other IT costs were insignificant are over.
Data centers are usually planned individually because they have particular tasks to fulfill. It’s extremely important already in the planning phase, to coordinate the air conditioning with the data center concept because the right commercial HVAC guarantees maximum failure safety with the lowest operating costs.
Over the past few years, operating costs have shown that the use of conventional recirculating air conditioning systems with CRAC / CRAH units are no longer economically viable. Commercial HVAC systems working by means of untreated outside air, can only be used to a limited extent. A modern and energy-efficient solution is air conditioning equipment that can be adapted to the climatic conditions in data centers. Energy-efficient flexible systems that combine in themselves free cooling, evaporative cooling and mechanical cooling. The use of outdoor air by free cooling is advantageous with regard to energy savings. One differentiates the direct and indirect free cooling. With direct free cooling, outside air reaches the IT room directly. Moderate climatic zones, are therefore perfect locations for equipment with this commercial HVAC system. The cooling is carried out in several steps depending on the external and the processed air.
At low outdoor temperatures, cost-efficient free cooling is achieved by the use of EC fans. The evaporative cooling is switched on from a certain outside temperature. The adiabatic cooling is based on the physical principle that when water evaporates and changes its aggregate state, water abstracts the required energy from the environment. By supplying moisture, an air stream can thus be cooled. In the case of indirect adiabatic cooling in the recirculating-air principle, the external air is humidified to a maximum and cools the exhaust air via one or more heat exchangers. The outside air absorbs the waste heat and releases it together with the moisture as an air to the environment. Compared to conventional air treatment, commercial air conditioning via free and indirect free cooling can make a great contribution to the saving of energy for commercial HVAC in data centers.