The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is planning to implement a liquid cooling systems into one of its major data centers. Developed by liquid cooling solutions company Asetek Inc., the direct-to-chip liquid cooling technology employs hot water and ambient air to cool servers.
“Hot water direct-to-chip liquid-cooling is a powerful approach that can capture more than 80 percent of the heat generated by a data center and remove it from the building, where it can be cooled for free by ambient air or even reused for building heating and hot water. No power what so ever goes in to actively chilling the water,” Andre Eriksen, Asetek’s CEO and founder, said. “The Department of Defense has become very serious about improving data center efficiency, and they are seeking new approaches to address this mission-critical problem.”
Multiple federal mandates are pushing the DoD to increase energy efficiency and use of renewable energy.
The DoD plans to convert an existing air-cooled data center into a liquid-cooled data center without disrupting operations. The National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) will analyze energy efficiency performance, savings, lifecycle cost and environmental benefits of the new liquid cooling system, while building systems specialist McKinstry Construction Co. will collect data results.
