Airedale US factory wins significant data centre order
24th July 2022
USA: Airedale has confirmed a significant order with data centre giant Corscale for its 130-acre Gainesville Crossing Data Campus in Northern Virginia.
The announcement follows commencement of full scale production at Airedale’s new US chiller plant in Rockbridge, Virginia.
Modine subsidiary Airedale says the order has secured a healthy pipeline for its OptiChill free-cooling chillers, AireWall fan walls and SmartCool ONE computer room air handling units, with plans for further business in the coming months.
Located in the North Virginia’s Data Centre Alley, the Gainesville Crossing Data Campus (GCDC) will encompass 2,300,000ft2 (21,3677m2) over five, two-storey buildings.
Corscale, is the exclusive data centre platform of Patrinely Group, and is focused on delivering sustainability at scale for hyperscale operators and enterprise clients.
Engineering specialists at the chiller plant in Virginia have worked with their colleagues at Airedale’s centre of excellence in Leeds, UK, and with engineers from Corscale, to develop a specialised data centre chiller based on their existing OptiChill range. The Corscale chiller, with enhanced free-cooling, has been designed to meet North American safety standards, using American materials and components.
Prior to the commencement of site deliveries, the team from Corscale will be invited to a witness test at Airedale by Modine’s brand new state-of-the-art laboratories in Rockbridge VA, where the units will be put through their paces under various conditions and tested at different heat loads, simulating the environment and conditions they will be operational under. The test centre at Rockbridge is capable of testing a complete range of air conditioning equipment up to 2.2MW, the climate temperature being fully controllable anywhere from 15°C to 52°C.
Chiller
The new Corscale chiller operates using high capacity twin screw compressors, with staged capacity control. Enhanced controls include fast start, input power limiting and intelligent management of compressors, refrigerant and pumps
An on-board variable speed pump precisely matches cooling demand and optimised economisers provide ample free-cooling potential.
AireWall is a range of computer room air handlers, which doesn’t require a raised floor. It has been specially designed to operate in tandem with Airedale’s free cooling chillers, offering low velocity air cooling for high-density data centre applications with hot-aisle containment.
SmartCool ONE is a 35kW to 1MW computer room air handler developed to meet the increasing demand for ultra-efficient, large capacity precision cooling systems in colocation and hyperscale data centres across the globe.
Modine’s new $7m Rockbridge facility is ideally located to serve the US data centre market, with Virginia being the largest data centre market in the world. Northern Virginia is home to more than 20% of all known hyperscale data centres worldwide. Alongside chiller production, Airedale by Modine will also manufacture SmartCool ONE CRAHs and AireWall fan walls in the US.
Related stories:
Airedale begins chiller production at new US plant – 26 May 2022
USA: Airedale has commenced production of its OptiChill air-cooled data centre chillers at its new plant in Rockbridge, Virginia. Read more…
