As we head toward a new year, data centers can look forward to seeing new technologies and practices that have long-term benefits. For instance, sustainable cooling is on track to become a major part of data center infrastructure. We’ll examine some of the sustainable cooling practices that should make a big splash in 2023, which you can start implementing now.
Three of the biggest practices we’ll see are liquid immersion cooling, renewable energy, and heat recycling. Each of these methods cuts the unnecessary use of environmental resources. As a result, businesses can proceed at high speed while leaving more resources available for future generations.
Learn what’s going to be cool in 2023. These exciting techniques can save you money while contributing to environmental programs that protect the planet. Some data centers have already started implementing these sustainable cooling practices, and more will do so in the coming year.
The Need for Sustainable Cooling
Sustainable cooling describes methods to remove excessive server heat from data centers while preserving natural resources. Previous data center cooling efforts often didn’t consider sustainability, but recently it’s become a hot topic. The pressure is growing. Data centers have become the number one accelerators of global electricity generation.
While some businesses worry that transitioning to sustainable cooling may negatively impact their bottom line, this isn’t the case. Sustainable solutions like PRASA | GRC liquid immersion cooling can even improve profits quite substantially.
Sustainable cooling has become an environmental, economic, and political necessity, and it’s becoming more urgent. Other sectors of the economy have already made rapid headway in their sustainability initiatives, and data centers need to catch up.
IT hardware and demand are expanding each year. Technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and cryptocurrency, and the Internet of Things (IoT) will exacerbate data center energy use. Decision-makers must therefore respond to the need for sustainable cooling. New techniques make this possible. A key example is PRASA | GRC’s liquid immersion cooling, which is setting higher expectations for the industry.
Liquid Cooling Gets Bigger
Data centers have experimented for some time with liquid instead of air cooling. Liquid carries away far more heat than air. To date, high-performance computing (HPC) has been one of the main users of liquid cooling. However, current trends indicate liquid cooling is increasingly expanding into more types of facilities.
Liquid cooling is on track to go from a niche solution in data center cooling to a mainstream practice. Sustainability and efficiency are the key advantages driving this transition. For instance, processors for modern workloads are becoming more power-intensive, and they increasingly require sustainable cooling techniques. In 2023, many data centers will adopt this hyper-efficient technology, with a strong growth forecast for the subsequent years as well.
There are several variants of liquid cooling available, and they differ considerably in their usefulness. The most efficient approach is to submerge entire servers in safe-for-electronics liquid, a process called immersion cooling. There are single-phase and two-phase immersion cooling, and the single-phase technique used by PRASA | GRC is far more practical for industry use.
Single-phase liquid immersion is the most exciting advance in data center cooling technology now available. It slashes electricity use, greenhouse gas emissions, water waste, e-waste, and many other environmental problems. Both large and small facilities are embracing single-phase immersion cooling systems like PRASA | GRC’s. Immersion cooling is the king of sustainable data center cooling and the big development for 2023.
Renewable Energy
Companies will increasingly turn to renewable energy sources for their data center cooling and IT power. These green sources include solar panels, wind turbines, and hydrogen fuel cells, as well as geothermal energy. Renewable resources are more sustainable than conventional fossil fuels have limited supplies and emit many toxins into the air.
Some data centers will only buy renewable energy certificates from utilities. Others will directly use these sources for primary or backup power dedicated to the facility. A certificate states that electricity is generated from green resources.
Cooling is one of the heaviest electricity draws in data centers, using up to around half of a facility’s power. As such, it’s critical to use environmentally friendly sources of electricity. Cutting emissions at the source is a smart way to go green that’s gaining steam. Incidentally, liquid immersion cooling eliminates much of your cooling electricity needs, so it complements renewables.
Heat Reuse
In 2023, it will become increasingly popular to recycle server heat into other applications. This is partly because sustainable cooling technology like PRASA | GRC’s liquid immersion cooling system makes this heat reuse practical. There are also new regulations requiring this practice in some areas.
Liquid works better than air for heat reuse because the heat remains in the liquid. You can then pump the heat to wherever it’s most profitable. By contrast, with conventional air cooling, most of the heat is lost as it dissipates into the atmosphere, worsening global warming in the process.
Data centers that recycle heat have a growing number of options for how to reuse the heat. Among the more common uses are heating air and water, which you can do for your own building or for entire municipal heat distribution systems. There are also plenty of creative ideas, from growing tomatoes to cooling facilities.
Use Sustainable Cooling With PRASA | GRC
Next year is shaping up to become one of the most innovative for data center cooling. More facilities will upgrade to sustainable solutions like liquid immersion cooling and renewable energy sources. Recycling heat will also become increasingly popular, building on the advantages of liquid cooling.
The best news is there’s no need to wait for 2024. It’s never too soon to make your data center greener: you can already implement these exciting techniques. Liquid cooling systems from PRASA | GRC can be deployed within weeks, and they enable you to reuse server heat. Talk to us today about increasing your sustainability and profitability.
