Advance adsorption assisted data centre cooling in tropics

Abstract

Data centres play a fundamental role in supporting the growth and demand for data computing, processing, and cloud storage. In order to maintain the data centre at its working temperature, a significant amount of power is used to cool the temperature of the air and data centre racks. Conventional refrigeration and cooling systems are used to cope with its cooling demands, resulting in adverse environmental impacts. The implementation of adsorption chillers for data centres reduces the impact of cooling methods on the environment as it is more energy efficient and removes the use of refrigerants which causes ozone depletion when exposed.

This report investigates the usage of hybrid data centre cooling and waste heat extraction to support the desorption process of an adsorption chiller cycle. Mathematical modelling is done to explore the waste heat extracted from the data centre via liquid cooling. Simulations are also conducted based on each adsorbent’s characteristic and system parameters, such as driving heat source temperature, which is derived based on the data centre output, and cycle times to achieve an optimal coefficient of performance (COP) and specific cooling power (SCP).

Based on the simulation results, it can be concluded that the COP and SCP are generally higher with a higher hot water temperature inlet. It can be found that the AQSOA-Z01 Zeolite + Water pair produces the best results of 0.95 COP and 1.06 kW/kg SCP at an optimal half cycle time of 700s with a hot water input temperature of 55.97°C.