Iceotope has developed a patented approach that tackles the problems of cooling servers in data centres from the source of the heat – at the component level – to its final destination. The heat produced by the components inside each server is captured effectively by immersing the server motherboards in individually sealed baths of an inert synthetic liquid coolant. With the heat now locked in to a liquid, subsequent stages of liquid (water) cooling can be implemented to efficiently transport the heat from source to final destination in the air outside the data centre as shown below.
“End to end liquid cooling” thermal path
This approach entirely eliminates air in the heat transfer path between server components and the air outside the data centre. Water is already used for heat transport in many data centre facilities, although usually outside of the main server room, as it is around 3500x better than air in this role. The Iceotope solution, as shown in the technology demonstration video below, couples building-level water circuits (which may be pre-existing or newly installed) directly to safe, efficient and low pressure rack-level liquid cooling.
Because of the greater thermal efficiency of this “end to end liquid” cooling path, the building water circuit can be run much warmer – potentially eliminating the need for chiller plant and enabling year-round free cooling. With this approach, the 3 year cooling cost of a 1 megawatt data centre could be reduced from around $788,400 to around $52,560; a 93% ($735,840) reduction compared to air cooling. By enabling servers to be packed more tightly without compromising the cooling efficiency, the same approach could reduce the space required for the servers by 84%.