Data Center Water Treatment

Since 1999, we’ve provided green treatment solutions and blacker bottom lines.

Water is vital for data center water treatment cooling.

Water is the most cost-effective way to cool data centers. Here’s the science behind why data centers water treatment is so important. The volumetric heat capacity of water is roughly 3,300 times greater than air. This makes utilizing water far more efficient when it comes to heat transfer. To put this into perspective, picture this. To cool one typical 8kW server rack, you will need 3200 m3/hour of air or only 2 m3/hour of water.

Critical for water-stressed regions

While water demand continuously increases for data center cooling systems —among other essential residential, commercial, and industrial uses—it simultaneously is becoming scarce due to the growing number of water-stressed regions and mandates on water-conscious practices. The draining of aquifers and the lower surface water volume are driving significant water shortages, especially in regions like the Southwest. Thus, plants must practice proper water management or reuse. The good news is that data centers can utilize this cost-effective medium with virtually no environmental or community impact by implementing well-established water treatment practices. Although the “water footprint” is complex, controlling and reducing water usage is quite simple.

Optimization of “Cycles of Concentration”

Datacenter cooling systems use water evaporation to reject heat. The “blowdown,” unevaporated water, which is high in minerals (high conductivity), is flushed away and replaced with fresh water or water “make-up.” Regardless of direct or indirect evaporative cooling systems, managing the cycles of concentration is critical and the most cost-effective solution. Water treatment programs aim to optimize the cycles. The cycles of concentration refers to the concentration of solid impurities in recirculating water. High cycles save water but may create scale build-up that may reduce cooling efficiency, adversely affecting the “power usage effectiveness” (PUE). Low cycles discharge blowdown prematurely, using more make-up water to compensate. Thus, it is critical to manage the cycles with the right level of treatment.

Optimize Your Cooling System with Equipment

Each cooling system sump operates independently. Some data center campuses have hundreds of sumps and can consume one hundred to two hundred times the amount of water as a standard office building (according to PG&E’s Data Center Best Practice Guide). From the data center water treatment perspective, monitoring and controlling each is the best approach to achieving the optimum cycles of concentration. The cost of monitoring and control is negligible compared to the water and energy savings. Datacenter operators can reduce their water use significantly with strict monitoring and control by themselves or with the help of companies like Chemstar WATER.

One way to reduce water’s scaling tendency is to attack the root cause: the concentration of calcium, magnesium-type minerals dissolved and concentrated in the water. Water treatment equipment, such as reverse osmosis, electrodialysis reversal, or capacitive deionization, can effectively reduce the water’s mineral concentration. Chemstar WATER provides its data center customers with many options depending on the water quality and need.

Benefits of Chemstar WATER

At Chemstar WATER, we provide continuous water testing and analysis to help you run your data center cooling systems at the highest optimum cycles to deliver superior water usage effectiveness (WUE) as well as power water usage effectiveness (PUE). We assess water and energy usage to identify the most efficient methods and build your program to minimize environmental and community impact. You’ll also maximize the use of free-air cooling that cools servers with outside air without using any water. When the water quality changes drastically, for example from surface water to groundwater, Chemstar WATER provides temporary mobile equipment, such as mobile reverse osmosis (RO) or deionization (DI) systems.

Legionnaires Disease Prevention

Chemstar WATER also provides ongoing water testing, and mitigation of Legionella, especially for Direct Evaporative (Adiabatic) Cooling systems. It is critical to use safe and environmentally friendly biocides as the direct evaporative systems provide the air to the server room. Chemstar WATER develops proprietary solutions to the scaling of the fill media that extends the life of the media.

Finally, we also regularly help our data center water treatment customers validate their drift eliminators to ensure that the cooling systems work effectively without any carry over to the server room.