UK company Iceotope finds way to cool down data server – saves power, cuts Co2

The most surprising piece of video I’ve seen recently is of a smartphone immersed in a beaker of some clear liquid, photographing the TV camera that was filming it. Link here

This is what TV viewers saw, and I’m sure they were amazed. Doesn’t everybody know that if you drop your mobile phone into water, or worse, it immediately packs up?

TV news is always looking for dramatic images, and I can’t blame them for choosing this one. But it’s only part of a more complicated – in visual terms – story. There’s a very exciting prospect, beyond this curious glass of liquid. (It was 3M Novec 1230 fluid, so-called “waterless water”.)

In short, a possible way to reduce the vast amount of energy we use to cool the Internet.

This is our problem. All the data we generate, from our computers, smartphones, our banks’ computers, the government, in short all the Internet data everybody uses, passes through and is stored on remote machines called servers, usually housed in large data centres all over the world. Great banks of servers keep purring away day and night, all year around.

It’s the nature of these machines that they get very hot, and so does the space around them. So they have to be constantly cooled, in the main with energy-guzzling high powered fans, which also produce heat. There’s usually air conditioning as well. Using all this air to cool the servers is very inefficient, and it takes a huge amount of power.

In the USA data centers used about 76 billion kilowatt-hours in 2010, or roughly 2 percent of all electricity used in the country that year. Put another way, the global power used to cool servers in 2011 was equivalent to half the energy, 31 gigawatts, used in peak hours in the UK.

That power bill is only going to get bigger. Saving data, and using the Internet, is a big generator of CO2. And we, as consumers, haven’t until now paid it much attention.

So what could Iceotope,a little start-up company in Rotherham, in Yorkshire, and the University of Leeds, where the still-functioning smartphone in a jar was filmed, do about it?

Between them they come up with a way of using Novec 1230 to cool down a server, and they say they are using 87% less energy to do it.

This is where that phone in a jar comes into the story. It demonstrates a remarkable property of this liquid. It has no effect on the electronics on the phone. “Real” water would’ve got into the workings instantly and quickly damaged it beyond repair – many of us know from bitter experience that if we do get our phones wet, we have to take the battery and the Sim card out as quickly as possible, and dry them off before they are ruined.

Imagine all the electrical and electronic parts of a server completely immersed in that same 3M “water”. It does them no harm at all. The server carries on working. Those power-hungry fans used to cool things down are no longer needed. They are replaced by a silent liquid cooling process. A low energy pump, located at the bottom of the cabinet, pumps a secondary coolant (ordinary water) to the top where, by gravity, it cascades down throughout all 48 modules. A third coolant, on an external loop, takes the heat away for possible reuse. Its designers calculate that the server cuts energy consumption for cooling by between 80 percent and 97 percent.

Novec 1230, a key component of the liquid-cooled server, was designed for use in firefighting where sprinklers would damage expensive equipment, or in places where water would be impractical – in libraries and galleries for example. It replaced an earlier product which had a considerable Co2 value and was ozone-depleting.

As the our use of the internet grows, and the world installs more and more servers – a 2008 report by McKinsey projected that data centre carbon emissions will quadruple by 2020 – there’s going to be an awful lot more heat to dissipate.

Companies are thinking of ways of bringing down the heat, but the obvious solution seems to be to find another method of cooling the server itself. Could this be Iceotope’s moment?

Iceotope has spent five years developing its liquid-cooled server. The University of Leeds School of Mechanical Engineering has been trying out a working prototype and has now installed the first production system. Iceotope and the University showed it off to the media in February 2013.

It’s going to take some time before it can be scaled up, and things could go wrong yet. Yet if Iceotope’s system can be shown to work on a bigger scale, and if it can be put into large-scale production, and if it is widely adopted, the consequences for energy conservation could be considerable.

There are other advantages. The heat from the server is transferred into (ordinary) water, which is piped away. That water can be reused. It can reach temperatures of 50°C (122°F), hot enough to be used for radiators.

Servers cooled in this way could be deployed where it is not possible today. Because it is silent and cool, users needn’t be so fussy about where they put the completely enclosed system. It could be used in places not appropriate for the standard (fan cooled) system, such as a submarine, the school classroom and the desert.

There are other potential applications. You know how hot your TV and audio system gets? Imagine if this cooling method could be applied to these, and perhaps even your fridge, allowing the heat to be drawn off and redirected into your central heating system. That’s what Iceotope have in mind.

If you want a good example of research and development, by a small number of dedicated, and bright, people working together to produce something that might be quite important for us all, look no further than this.

The product is not a done deal by any means, but it could have a very exciting future.

http://www.garethhuwdavies.com/environment_blog/uk-company-iceotope-find-way-to-cool-down-data-server-saves-power-cuts-co2/

The Iceotope Liquid Cooling System in Action

This cross-section of an Iceotope server module provides an overview of the liquid cooling system and how the water and Novec function inside the chassis. (Photo: Iceotope)

Iceotope has moved from the show floor to the lab. The UK cooling company, which launched

in 2009, has developed a liquid cooling system that encapsulates servers in heat pipe modules containing 3M’s Novec fluid as its heat removal medium. Last March we provided an update on the company's demo at the Cebit trade show, and a year later the company has a system running in the lab at the University of Leeds.

The company makes some attention-getting claims about its liquid cooling technology, claiming it can reduces data center cooling costs by 97 percent, IT power load by 20 percent and overall infrastructure costs by 50 percent. But Iceotope has advanced slowly since its debut at the SC09 conference, testing its technology at the Universty of Sheffield and now at the University of Leeds, which said this week that it has got its the first Iceotope production system installed after two years of testing prototypes.

In Iceotope’s approach, each servermotherboard is completely immersed in a sealed bath of liquid coolant which passively transfers heat away from the electronics to a heat exchanger formed by the wall of the module, where water is continuously re-circulated by low-power pumps. The system is nearly silent and requires no cooling outside the cabinet, which in theory would allow data center operators to eliminate expensive room-level cooling schemes. Iceotope says its system uses just 80 watts of power to harvest the heat from up to 20 kilowatts of IT equipment.

“The fact that this system is completely enclosed raises a host of possibilities,” said Dr. Nikil Kapur, also from the University of Leeds’ School of Mechanical Engineering. “It does not interact with its environment in the way an air-cooled server does, so you could put it in an extreme environment like the desert. It is also completely silent. You could have it on a submarine or in a classroom.”

“Extraordinary Stuff”

“The liquid we are using is extraordinary stuff,” said  Dr. Jon Summers, Kapur’s colleague at the University of Leeds. “You could throw your mobile phone in a tub of it and the phone would work perfectly. But the important thing for the future of computing and the Internet is that it is more than 1,000 times more effective at carrying heat than air.”

Iceotope uses Novec, a non-conductive chemical with a very low boiling point, which easily condenses from gas back to liquid. It’s made by 3M, which is also developing its own immersion cooling technology around Novec. That technology, known as “open bath immersion cooling,” is in the early stages of commercialization. But another liquid cooling vendor, Green Revolution Cooling, has placed several installations in production and is working with Intel to adapt motherboards for its immersion cooling systems.

Iceotope executives say they are pleased with their progress and see big things ahead for the technology.

“More than five years of research, innovation and collaboration have gone into Iceotope’s technology,” said Peter Hopton, Iceotope’s Chief Technology Officer. “The basic principle of the design has many applications and, while a few years away, there is no reason why every home shouldn’t make better use of the surplus heat from consumer electronics, imagine having your PC or TV plumbed into the central heating system.”

Reported by Rich Miller

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2013/03/04/iceotope-liquid-cooling-in-action/

Liquid-cooled server first in Leeds

A liquid-cooled computer server designed in the UK is being tested at the University of Leeds.

The claim is the system which effectively immerses the components of the server in liquid is more energy efficient than air-cooled systems which require fans.

Its designers calculate that the server cuts energy consumption for cooling by between 80% and 97%.  

UK start-up Iceotope designed and built the server working with team of researchers led by Dr Jon Summers from the University of Leeds’ School of Mechanical Engineering. 

“The basic principle of the design has many applications and, while a few years away, there is no reason why every home shouldn't make better use of the surplus heat from consumer electronics, imagine having your PC or TV plumbed into the central heating system," said Peter Hopton, Iceotope’s chief technology officer and originator of the Iceotope concept. 

Start-ups to follow in 2013 - Iceotope

The first production system has now been installed at the University after two years of testing prototypes.

The team from Leeds used computational fluid dynamics to model how the coolant flows through the new server’s components.

The non-flammable liquid coolant, called 3M Novec, can be in direct contact with electronics because it does not conduct electricity. 

“The liquid we are using is extraordinary stuff. You could throw your mobile phone in a tub of it and the phone would work perfectly,” said Summers.

“The important thing for the future of computing and the internet is that it is more than 1,000 times more effective at carrying heat than air," said Summers. 

A low energy pump, located at the bottom of the cabinet, is used to pump a secondary coolant (water) to the top where it cascades down throughout all 48 modules due to gravity.

The secondary coolant terminates at heat exchangers within the cabinet for transfer of heat to a third and final coolant, on an external loop, taking the heat away for external cooling or reuse.

The third coolant can be drawn from “grey water” sources such as rainwater or river water, further reducing the environmental impact of the server. 

The output water can reach temperatures of up to 50°C, which can be used for heating. 

The cooling system uses just 80W of power to remove the heat from computers drawing up to 20kW. 

“The fact that this system is completely enclosed raises a host of possibilities. It does not interact with its environment in the way an air-cooled server does, so you could put it in an extreme environment like the desert,” said Dr Nikil Kapur, from the University of Leeds’ School of Mechanical Engineering

http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Articles/01/03/2013/55679/liquid-cooled-server-first-in-leeds.htm

New way to keep PCs cool: Submerge them in goo

As a result, the cost of keeping the datacenters cool is massively reduced (and they're quieter, to boot). A "rack" of servers might take several kilowatts of power for its fans and venting, but Iceotope's use only a small fraction of that — 80 watts or less. And the outgoing water is easier to handle than hot air and could even be used for purposes such as residential heating.
The scourge of the hot computer isn't limited to lap-scalding notebooks. The enormous datacenters used by the likes of Facebook and Google generate immense amounts of heat and cost a fortune in air conditioning. But there's a new option: Dip the whole computer in heat-dissipating goo.

Most computers these days are air-cooled with fans. (You can often hear one spinning up if your computer is working hard on a task.)

Higher-end computers such as custom gaming rigs may resort to water cooling, which uses cool water in copper pipes to absorb and whisk away more heat than air alone. Even exotic materials like liquid nitrogen or hydrogen can be used in extreme circumstances.


But those aren't suitable for applying to the thousands of servers in a Facebook datacenter. Unfortunately, the most common solution seems to be huge air-conditioning and venting systems, along with using naturally cool locations — a solution that could have ecological implications.

A company called Iceotope has what it thinks is the best of both worlds: putting the whole server "blade" (the individual hardware component of a server "farm") inside a container full of a special liquid called Novec. Made by 3M, it's specially engineered to dissipate heat, doing so 20 times faster than water — and 1,000 times faster than air.

But the key is that Novec doesn't conduct electricity at all, meaning that a computer or any electronic device can sit in it and run, happy as a clam. The researchers who came up with the technique demonstrate the benefits of Novec this in the following video, which shows mobile phones being dunked and functioning perfectly well:
The server works at high capacity and produces lots of heat, which spreads out quickly through the Novec bath. The module's enclosure is made of aluminum, which also conducts heat well, outside of which is an array of running pipes, filled with cool water. This fast-moving water draws out the heat and then gets promptly pumped out.

This sort of system is great for Google and its big-data ilk, but what about consumers? For now, the system is too specialized for use in laptops, or for that matter smartphones, which occasionally also get hot to the touch. It's not out of the question, but this magic liquid will probably take some time to trickle down, so to speak, to ordinary usersThe first to deploy the system is the University of Leeds, which helped test and develop the server modules. They'll be using it to run engineering students' computer models — and routing the warmed water through radiators to heat the lab.

Iceotope plumbs in immersively cooled servers for first customer

Iceotope's immersively cooled server racks are now in production, and the company has named its first customer. The University of Leeds has been using an Iceotope server since December to run computational fluid dynamics models -- and to warm the radiators in one of its laboratories.

The company showed off prototypes of its unusual liquid-cooled system at the Cebit trade show in Germany last March, but took another few months to figure out how to mass-produce the aluminum server modules, which are filled with Novec, an inert coolant liquid from 3M.The Novec carries heat from the server motherboard to the module's surface by natural convection, without the need for noisy, inefficient fans. Water is pumped to the top of the rack, from where it trickles down over the modules to a heat exchanger. A secondary water circuit then carries the heat away, either to a rooftop cooling system or, at the University of Leeds, to regular domestic radiators.

Leeds University Tests UK Company Iceotope’s Liquid-Cooled Servers

Iceotope has announced its first customer, having installed a next generation liquid-cooled server at the University of Leeds. The British firm has been working on its system for some years and plans to take part in a major shift as it believes data centres will have to move to liquid cooling to reduce their energy consumption in the near future.

After two years of testing prototypes, Iceotope has installed the first liquid-cooled production system at the university, where it is being assessed in a real-world environment. The Iceotope’s system essentially cools hot-running servers, sealed into a specially-made blade, by immersing them in liquid coolant solution. Heat is removed from the blade by circulating hot water past it within the system rack.

University examination

Iceotope claims to be able to reduce the energy consumption costs for server cooling by between 80 percent and 97 percent. The hot water produced can be re-used for other purposes including central heating.

The company designed and built the new server, working in partnership with a team of researchers led by Dr Jon Summers from the University of Leeds’ School of Mechanical Engineering.

Iceotope says that, because all the electronics are encapsulated in a sealed unit containing 3M’s dielectric coolant Novec as the inert coolant, it reduces the power consumed at a server level by eliminating the need for any fans. While the idea of immersing electronics in any liquid may seem strange, Novec can be in direct contact with electronics because it does not conduct electricity.

The Novec bath rapidly convects heat away from the electronics and then transfers it to water contained in a sealed low-pressure, gravity-fed subsystem. The water can then be passively cooled or used to provide hot water for other buildings, facilities or office spaces.

Liquid cooling is gaining traction in the industry. Last September, for example, Intel gave its blessing to the concept, after it approved the idea of a rival system from Green Revolution Cooling (GRC), after a one year trial.

Google also uses liquid cooling in its data centres, and Sun founder Scott McNeally has backed another immersion advocate LiquidCool (formerly Hardcore Computing).


http://www.channelbiz.co.uk/2013/03/01/leeds-university-tests-uk-company-iceotopes-liquid-cooled-servers/

Liquid cooled server could slash cooling costs by 97%

While the cooling of servers is traditionally done using fans and air conditioning units, all of the components in the new server are completely immersed in a non-flammable liquid coolant called 3M Novec. 

University of Leeds spinoff Iceotope has developed a liquid cooled computer server that it claims could cut cooling costs by 97% and compute power load by 20%.

This eliminates the need for noisy fans required by traditional computers and the server does not require an elaborate pump to move the coolant over its components. 

Instead, a simple low energy pump, located at the bottom of the cabinet, pumps a secondary coolant (water) to the top where it cascades down throughout all 48 modules due to gravity. 

The secondary coolant terminates at heat exchangers within the cabinet for transfer of heat to a third and final coolant, on an external loop, taking the heat away for external cooling or reuse. 

Because of the high cooling efficiency of the system, the output water can reach temperatures of up to 50°C, which can be used for heating and other uses. 

The Iceotope system uses just 80W of power to harvest the heat from up to 20kilowatts of use. The server also does away with the need for ancillary data centre facilities such as computer room air conditioning units, humidity control systems and air purification. 

Peter Hopton, Iceotope's cto and originator of the Iceotope concept, said: "More than five years of research, innovation and collaboration have gone into Iceotope's technology. 

"The basic principle of the design has many applications and, while a few years away, there is no reason why every home shouldn't make better use of the surplus heat from consumer electronics, imagine having your pc or tv plumbed into the central heating system."

http://www.newelectronics.co.uk/electronics-news/liquid-cooled-server-could-slash-cooling-costs-by-97/48250/