Feasibility study of an evaporative cooling (with water recovery) for energy efficient and sustainable operation of edge data centers

Team: Kenneth Goodson, Juan Santiago, Steve Jones, Mehdi Asheghi
Planning (Scoping)

Sustainable and efficient operation of data centers will require transformative and innovative technologies. Today U.S. data centers draw about 100 billion kilowatt hours per year, 20% of which energizes the refrigeration cooling infrastructure, which is sensitive to climate and environmental conditions. Suppliers of cooling equipment have improved the energy efficiency of their products, but the ever-increasing reliance on higher-power processors exacerbates the challenges related to cooling energy. Furthermore, U.S. data centers consume ~650 billion liters of water annually. 

In this project, researchers explore a novel cooling solution based on evaporative cooling with water recovery. This solution relies on low-grade waste heat from microprocessors to harvest and recycle water in a fluidized bed of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). MOFs are a class of crystalline materials with ultra-high porosity (up to 90% free volume) and enormous internal surfaces (~6,000 square meters per gram). The approach obviates the need for the energy- and water-hungry vapor-compression refrigeration cycle that requires wasteful on-site wet cooling towers. The team identified key performance metrics, analyzed candidate MOF materials, and developed a custom, open-source techno-economic analysis model for data center cooling strategies. The model accepts as inputs the characteristics of the data centers (rack consumption, number of racks, local cost of energy) and of the chosen cooling strategy (component installation and renewal costs, component lifetimes, and power usage effectiveness). It compares the cumulative costs of cooling strategies over different project lifetimes while accounting for future price effects. The cost breakdown for each strategy highlights the pain points where technical innovation will deliver the greatest impact. Funding applications went out to multiple agencies and industry outreach established relationships with data center companies such as Intel Corporation, SuperMicro Computer Inc., and Nvidia Corporation related to the design of advanced energy-efficient data centers.

This project also contributes toward the Freshwater flagship destination.