data center immersion liquid cooling technology
Definition and principle of immersion liquid cooling technology:
The liquid cooling does not simply refer to water. It refers to taking the liquid with high specific heat capacity as the transmission medium to take away the heat generated by it equipment or server and cool it. At present, there are three deployment modes of liquid cooling technology, namely immersion, cold plate and spraying. Immersion liquid cooling technology is a kind of cooling technology that takes liquid as heat transfer medium, the heating device is immersed in liquid, and heat exchange is carried out through direct contact. According to whether the medium has phase change, it can be divided into single-phase immersion and two-phase immersion.
Principle of single-phase immersion liquid cooling: in single-phase immersion liquid cooling, electronic fluorinated liquid maintains liquid phase. The electronic components are directly immersed in the fluorinated liquid with dielectric characteristics, and the liquid is placed in a sealed but easy to operate cabinet. The heat is transferred from the electronic components to the liquid. Generally, the circulating pump is used to circulate the heated electronic fluorinated liquid to the heat exchanger. Cool in the heat exchanger and return to the cabinet.
Principle of two-phase immersion liquid cooling: in the two-phase immersion liquid cooling, the heat transfer efficiency of the liquid is improved exponentially through the boiling and condensation process of electronic fluorinated liquid. The electronic components are directly immersed in the dielectric liquid in the cabinet, which is sealed but easy to operate. In the cabinet, heat is transferred from the electronic components to the fluorinated liquid and causes the liquid to boil to produce steam. The steam condenses on the heat exchanger (condenser) in the cabinet and transfers the heat to the facility cooling water circulating in the data center.
Benefits and Advantages:
Compared with the traditional air cooling, the immersion liquid cooling system provides greater heat dissipation capacity - the heat carried by the same volume of liquid is nearly 3000 times that of the same volume of air, and the thermal conductivity of liquid is 25 times that of air - providing a variety of opportunities for high-power deployment of data centers. For the same data center space, when the power density of the data center increases by 10 times, for example, a rack reaches 50KW or 100kW, it is obvious that submerged liquid cooling can provide significant space and energy savings.
1. The application of immersion liquid cooling technology is helpful to realize the energy saving of data center. Firstly, compared with the traditional air-cooled data center, the immersion liquid cooling data center removes the air-conditioning system and the corresponding air-cooled infrastructure, and increases the circulating pump, which can save the construction cost. Secondly, compared with the air cooling system, the liquid cooling data center can save about 30% energy, effectively reduce the energy consumption ratio, and reduce the pue to 1.05, meeting the requirements of green data center.
2. The efficient refrigeration of immersion liquid cooling technology can effectively improve the efficiency and stability of IT equipment. The liquid conduction temperature transmission effect is faster and better, which can realize the efficient refrigeration of IT equipment. At the same time, due to the large specific heat capacity of the liquid, its temperature will not change significantly after absorbing a large amount of heat, so it can stabilize the temperature of IT equipment.
3.Immersion liquid cooling technology helps to reduce noise in the data center and achieve mute effect. Under the same heat dissipation conditions, the pump and coolant system used in the liquid cooling system do not have a fan that produces a lot of noise. Compared with the traditional air conditioning system, the noise is less. Generally, the main noise in the submerged liquid cooling data can be controlled below 50dB.
4. immersion liquid cooling technology helps to improve the server density per unit space of the data center and greatly improve the computing efficiency of the data center. The liquid cooling data center saves the construction of air conditioning system and corresponding infrastructure, saves a lot of space and can accommodate more servers. At the same time, the liquid cooling technology can cope with the cooling work of the high-power density data center. For example, the power distribution of a single cabinet can reach more than 50KW or even 150KW in the future. The liquid cooling data center can be equipped with high-density servers, so that the unit space can achieve several times or even tens of times higher computing efficiency than the traditional computer room.
The development of immersion liquid cooling data center will not only penetrate into different industries vertically, but also combine with artificial intelligence, edge computing, 5g and other technologies horizontally. While supporting the implementation of other technologies, it will also achieve better development in practical application and promote the digital transformation and implementation of the whole industry. With the acceleration of digital transformation of various industries in society, in order to promote green energy conservation and sustainable development, immersion liquid cooling technology will usher in an opportunity period of rapid development based on a number of technical advantages and development potential.
