Author

Ravi Mishra

Graduation Semester and Year

2016

Language

English

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering

Department

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

First Advisor

Dereje Agonafer

Second Advisor

Miguel Amaya

Abstract

Recent researches and a few facility owners have focused on eliminating the chiller plant altogether by implementing ‘Evaporative Cooling’, as an alternative or augmentation to compressor-based air conditioning since the energy consumption is dominated by the compressor work (around 41%) in the chiller plant. Because evaporative cooling systems consume water, when evaluating the energy savings potential of these systems, it is imperative to consider not just their impacts on electricity use, but also their impacts on water consumption as well since Joe Kava, Google’s head of data center operations, was quoted as saying that water is the “big elephant in the room” for data center companies. The objective of this study was to calculate the savings achieved in water consumption when these evaporative cooling systems were completely or partially marginalized when the facility is strictly working in the Economizer mode also known as ‘free cooling’ considering other modes of cooling required only for a part of the time when outside temperature, humidity and pollutant level were unfavorable causing improper functioning and reliability issues. The analysis was done on ASHRAE climatic zones with the help of TMY-3 weather data.

Keywords

Data center, Economizer, Water consumption

Disciplines

Aerospace Engineering | Engineering | Mechanical Engineering

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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