Phase change cooling in data centers: A review

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Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
A2 Katsausartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
Date
2021-04-01
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Language
en
Pages
Series
Energy and Buildings, articlenumber 110764
Abstract
With the advent of big data era, data centers (DCs) related energy use accounts for approximately 3% of the global electric power consumption. As the augmentation of data-processing performance and thermal density in DCs, its energy use will undoubtedly continuously burst. Meanwhile, the potential safety hazards, caused by IT equipment local overheating, threaten the safe operation and restrict the further development of DCs. Thus, efficient cooling approaches should be applied in DCs to ensure its safe operation and optimize its thermal environment and cooling efficiency. Phase change cooling (PCC) technology is regarded as one of the effective and widely-used cooling methods, which have been applied in DCs for several years. In this paper, the up-to-date PCC technologies are reviewed and summarized, as well as the latest progress in DC cooling field. Four main PCC technologies are discussed in this paper, namely independent heat pipe cooling, integrated heat pipe cooling, two-phase immersion cooling, and cold storage systems. Finally, the shortcomings of the current researches on the PCC methods are summarized, while some suggestions for future researches are provided to promote the application of PCC technologies and achieve safe operations and energy savings in data centers.
Description
Keywords
data center, phase change cooling, heat pipe system, operation safety, heat transfer enhancement, energy saving
Other note
Citation
Yuan, X, Zhou, X, Pan, Y, Kosonen, R, Cai, H, Gao, Y & Wang, Y 2021, ' Phase change cooling in data centers: A review ', Energy and Buildings, vol. 236, 110764 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2021.110764