ASHRAE releases best practice guide for liquid cooling systems in data centers

ASHRAE recently released “Liquid Cooling Guidelines for Datacom Equipment Centers,” second edition, a guide for implementing liquid cooling systems in data centers. The guide provides guidelines on interface requirements between chilled-water systems and technology cooling systems and on the requirements of liquid-cooled systems that attach to a datacom electronics rack.

Data center rack heat loads are steadily climbing, creating a need for liquid cooling solutions to reduce the volume of airflow needed, ASHRAE says. “There is an increasing interest in liquid-cooled IT equipment at the rack, equipment and component levels,” says Don Beaty, publication chair of Technical Committee 9.9., Mission Critical Facilities, Data Centers, Technology Spaces and Electronic Equipment. “There is also increased interest in reuse of the heat rejected from IT equipment. One of the more important changes to the second edition is the addition of supply water temperature classification.”

The addition of liquid classes can have a similar effect on the industry as the creation of supply air temperature classes did—which was the critical enabler to the use of economizers in data centers, Beaty says. “There are five water temperature classes with the highest temperature class being >45 C (113 F), which opens up possibilities for using the rejected heat for building heating systems,” he said.

(https://www.ashrae.org/news/2014/supply-water-temperature-classification-new-addition-to-updated-guidance-on-cooling-data-centers)