Evaporative humidifier boosts data centre cooling
13th June 2022
UK: The Condair ME evaporative humidifier is helping UK manufacturer Weatherite reduce cooling system energy consumption for its data centre and telecoms clients by up to 80%.
Condair’s evaporative humidifier is providing adiabatic cooling in Weatherite’s Adtec-D free-cooling unit. It boosts the cooling capacity of the system, allowing the Adtec-D to fully replace the need for mechanical cooling in some applications.
The Adtec-D is a self-contained, modular cooling system that can be located either inside or outside of a building. In data hall or telecom environments, for most of the year it operates in free-cooling mode. However, when the outside temperature rises to around 20°C, the Adtec-D switches to adiabatic cooling mode. The incoming air is then passed through the Condair ME, which evaporates water into the fresh air stream, cooling it by up to a further 12°C.
By combining free-cooling and evaporative cooling, Weatherite’s Adtec-D has recently been able to fully replace DX mechanical cooling across more than 800 switchgear rooms for a leading UK telecoms provider. A total of around 1,500 Adtec-D units have been deployed in the project to date.
A single legacy 30kW DX and free air cooling unit was consuming around 71,000kWh annually to maintain the required internal temperature, operating 24/7. The replacement 30kW Adtec-D cooling unit consumes just 14,000kWh to meet the same annual cooling load. This resulted in an 80% energy saving for the client, which is a significant 83.3MWh annual saving in electricity across the UK-wide retrofit project.
Available in modules that can provide from 15 to 80kW of sensible cooling, the Adtec-D will typically operate with an energy efficiency ratio greater than 15, even at peak outputs.
“The evaporative cooling technology, supplied by Condair, ensures the Adtec-D can maintain the allowable ASHRAE conditions, even during the warmer months in a European climate without the reliance on F-gas refrigerants,” said Weatherite technical manager Andy Lewis.
