A sustainable data center with heat-activated cooling

Abstract

Technological and economic trends in data centers push toward facilities operated at higher ambient temperatures and at higher power densities to meet ever-increasing computational demands. Conventionally, data centers are cooled with vapor-compressor equipment which requires extra power to be driven. This paper proposes an alternative and sustainable data center cooling architecture that is heat driven. The thermal source is the heat produced by the data center room's equipment. A major challenge is providing both enough cooling to the data center and enough exergy to drive the cooling process, regardless of the thermal output of the data center equipment. This challenge is addressed by the use of organic heat storage and a sustainably powered (i.e. solar-powered) heat source, leading potentially to a PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) value of less than one.