A unique cooling system using 3M™ Novec™ Engineered Fluids has been launched to provide a low cost, low energy solution to prevent servers from over-heating.
Designed, engineered and manufactured by Sheffield-based Iceotope Research and Development Ltd in conjunction with 3M and the University of Leeds, the integrated server platform reduces the energy used to cool IT equipment by 97 per cent as it doesn’t need chillers and air conditioning units.
Data centres currently account for around 5 per cent of the UK’s energy consumption and it costs just as much to cool servers using air conditioning systems as it does to run them.
“Researchers predict that the world’s data centres will consume 19 per cent more energy in the next 12 months than they have in the past year,” said Peter Hopton, founder and chief technical officer of Iceotope. “In order to try to combat this increase in power consumption, we need to start looking at technology that will help not only reduce the environmental footprint, but also help reduce the costs associated with power and cooling in data centres and other high-performing computing environments.
“Through our research with the University of Leeds and 3M, we’re excited about the impact our solution will have on data centre design and location.”
With Iceotope’s innovative liquid system, servers are encapsulated in a sealed unit with 3M™ Novec™ fluids acting as an inert coolant. This eliminates the need for air conditioning and harvests the heat from 20 kilowatts of IT equipment using just 80 watts of power. The harvested heat can then be reused or passively cooled.
As the system is silent and fully sealed with the electronics protected from the environment, the need to locate servers in a ‘clean building’ away from people is reduced. This creates the added benefit of providing more flexibility for the location of servers and has the potential to reduce the costs associated with purpose-built clean data rooms.
Said Keith Deakin, principal design engineer for Iceotope Research and Development: “The system has been designed to provide a sustainable end-to-end liquid cooling system for whole data centres. The motherboard is encapsulated in a sealed module containing a Novec fluid and this is used to harvest the heat from every component on the board. The heat is then transferred into a separate sealed water channel within the cabinet.
“Gravity, combined with a simple pump, moves the water around the circuits in the cabinet and the heat is then transferred through heat exchangers connected back to the building’s water supply.
“Our ethos is to keep the servers at their optimum working temperature by using as little energy as possible.”
The 3M™ Novec™ Engineered Fluid was chosen by Iceotope as it is a high-performing inert chemical coolant with environmental benefits.
Said Keith: “As well as being very good at convecting heat away from the heat-generating components on the motherboard, Novec fluid’s environmental impact is as low as we can find for such a coolant. It is thermally stable, non-ozone depleting and has a very low global warming potential.”
3M sales manager, Adrian Hyner, and technical sales specialist for 3M’s Electronics Markets Materials division, Mark Nursall, have worked closely with Iceotope on the development of the solution since the company was set up as an offshoot of a computer firm three years ago.
“Using a non-flammable coolant rather than a potentially flammable solution improves safety as well as making a dramatic overall reduction in electricity costs.
“The system also incorporates the latest award-winning high performance 3M™ Twin Axial Cables to transmit high speed data signals from the module to the back panel. In addition, 3M™ Scotchcast™ resin has been used to seal the entry point to the module. The introduction of these additional 3M technologies further enhanced the cost and performance benefits of the Iceotope platform solution.”
The Iceotope system been tested at a Swiss bank and is also being tested in operation at leading research universities in the UK and will be available for delivery towards the end of the year.
"We're excited about the impact our solution will have on data centre design and location." Peter Hopton
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