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Cooling architecture selection for air-cooled Data Centers by minimizing exergy destruction

Gupta, Rohit; Asgari, Sahar; Moazamigoodarzi, Hosein; Pal, Souvik; Puri, Ishwar K; (2020) Cooling architecture selection for air-cooled Data Centers by minimizing exergy destruction. Energy , 201 , Article 117625. 10.1016/j.energy.2020.117625. Green open access

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Abstract

Air-cooled Data Centers (DCs) require effective thermal management of the servers which can be accomplished by implementing new cooling architectures. Nearly 33% of overall energy consumption is attributed to the cooling infrastructure, which indicates the importance of the specific cooling configuration. Our objective is to compare four emerging and traditional DC cooling architectures, (a) in-row cooling, (b) rack-mountable cooling (RMC), (c) underfloor air delivery (UFAD), and (d) overhead air delivery. Since a first law-based energy analysis of a DC cooling architecture seldom considers irreversibility and component level inefficiency, an exergy-based analysis provides an alternate basis of assessment. We propose a methodology that combines computational fluid dynamics simulations with thermodynamic energy and exergy balances to determine the exergy loss in different components in DC. A dimensionless parameter is identified to characterize the exergy loss as a function of the Peclet number and the dimensionless dead state temperature ratio. The architecture containing RMC unit has the lowest exergy loss. The chiller loss constitutes up to 55% of the overall exergy loss. This analysis facilitates better decision making and design choices for air-cooled DCs based on minimizing thermodynamic irreversibility to lower energy waste.

Type: Article
Title: Cooling architecture selection for air-cooled Data Centers by minimizing exergy destruction
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2020.117625
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2020.117625
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
Keywords: Science & Technology, Physical Sciences, Technology, Thermodynamics, Energy & Fuels, Data center, Exergy destruction, Distributed cooling, Energy efficiency, Irreversibility, TURBULENT SHEAR FLOWS, THERMAL MANAGEMENT, ENTROPY PRODUCTION, ENERGY, METRICS
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Mechanical Engineering
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10161276
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