With its exponential growth and apparently unquenchable advance in technology, the data center industry is presenting a unique challenge for the cooling sector. It might be the good kind of challenge, since it naturally foments a climate of innovation, but those supplying the sector certainly need to be on their toes.

The current situation is not helped by the fact that the data center sector in Europe is being put under the spotlight by governments keen to see such huge users of electricity act more responsibly on both energy and carbon grounds.

Many data centers are worrying about their carbon footprint, their air leakage and their heat re-use in a way they really weren't in recent years. Now the mantra is not just "resilience" but "responsibility," too. In the U.K., we are seeing the rising influence of a breed of data center business owners who have a background in the cooling or related disciplines, which is seeing more application of "thermodynamic solutions to data center problems."

For example, Dr. Adam Beaumont, the owner of British telco operator aql, has recently been able to apply his background in thermodynamics to the design and operation of his own data center sites.

"When we set out to build our data center in Leeds, we thought we should get the textbooks out again so as to apply some science to what we wanted to cool," Beaumont said. "The theory was that we apply the science and then leave the engineering to our supply partners to make sure it all runs to spec."

However, Beaumont ran into two big problems with his data center. It sucks up all of the city's power, and its spinning fans produce too much noise and heat. He refers to it as an "antisocial monster in the center of the city."

"The city planners say, 'We want to build nice balconies, but all we can hear is the sound of a plague of locusts below.' So we have to try and decrease that level of antisociality. We do that by offering to share our heat and by keeping our noise down," Beaumont said. "So as a data center operator, you can't just get involved with your own scheme, you become an unpaid city planner."

Beaumont has worked with the Leeds City Council planners to help curb this problem by becoming a heat supplier.

"We helped design the scheme in Leeds so that we could inject heat into the cold return of the heating scheme. Rejecting heat to atmosphere is also something of an antisocial act, so it is a great driver to get the city council to foster cooperation with more parties who can take that heat."

The data center plans to share its energy with 338 homes being built next to it. These homes will require only 1 kilowatt per home to keep heated (at no charge), so they are amazingly efficient.

At the smaller end of the scale, Andy Hayes, director of design and build specialist Keysource says underfloor heating makes good use of the low-grade heat.

"We have done projects at the smaller computer room end where we have reused the waste heat on the return of the water loop for underfloor heating, because that requires the heat all the time based on a 13-14 degree (Celsius) intake," Hayes said. "That's at the smaller end, but at the larger scale there are interesting things going on with eco villages where you recapture the heat in various ways, or you could consider building a swimming pool next to the data center."

When asked what single message, as an operator, Beaumont would give to the supply industry, he is unequivocal — it is about heat. He believes the difference between heat and temperature are not sufficiently understood.

"We need to produce guidance that can be easily understood by the lawyers for negotiating service-level agreements. It is about how we exchange a certain amount of heat, not keeping the center to 21 degrees," Beaumont said. "You can provide a nice trickle of air at 21 degrees, but the equipment will be starving. We should be talking about thermodynamic equilibrium. If you go into one of our data centers, it is quiet. You can have a conversation in there because everything is at a steady state."

Those who work in the operational side of the data centers agree that this understanding and control of air flows is an essential for those at the end-user level. Frank Mills, technical director of M&E specialist Cordant, has witnessed this firsthand.

"We often find problems with turbulence, and often that is caused by air coming in around the cables — those cable holes are causing unnecessary turbulence and affecting efficiency," Mills said. "We also put temperature sensors in the ceiling above the IT racks, and it showed a number of hot spots. Interestingly, the IT guys said that if they know this information, they can manage the IT to reduce the hot spots — but they need the information from us on air flows."

Stu Redshaw, founder of specialist IT energy consultancy EkkoSense (and interestingly one of those poachers-turned-gamekeepers who comes from a thermodynamics background) agrees.

"Overprovision of air flow can often be a problem. Our methodology is to start metering out air flow, viewing it as the precious resource that it is and then make sure that everything adheres to ASHRAE TC [Technical Committee for Mission Critical Facilities] 9.9, maintain that air-on temperature and 29 degrees C and be extremely tight with the floor," Redshaw said.

"I am not a huge fan of regulation, but perhaps the air-flow environment should be regulated in the same way as say F-gas, as it is so important. If data centers were to have an air conditioning inspection, the same way buildings do under the EPBD, that would be the single biggest impact on the data center environment."