Graduation Semester and Year

2014

Language

English

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering

Department

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

First Advisor

Dereje Agonafer

Abstract

The energy consumption of data centers in the current US market is fast growing in large numbers by every day. It was reported that in 2013, US data centers almost consumed 91 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity significant enough to power the whole of New York city twice a year [1]. Ever since the explosion of cloud computing, digital content and others the energy consumed by data centers has taken a steep increase and will continue in the coming years.As a result, there is a growing need to reduce the energy consumption of data centers by employing different cooling techniques which does the balance act by reducing the power consumed and increasing the efficiency. Evaporative cooling in particular is the most sought after cooling techniques in the recent years. This involves the use of evaporative pads for cooling the hot ambient air.Evaporative cooling media have become an important factor that affect the efficiency of evaporative cooling systems. Typically, different types of media pads have been employed these days in data center environments to maximize the efficient use of outside free air. These pads fitted across the CRAC units are completely saturated with water. To facilitate better cooling, the pads are soaked for a longer time for higher efficiency of direct evaporative cooling. Various factors affect performance of evaporative cooling media. Many literature papers report on factors that affect performance of cooling pads that are used in greenhouse and poultry farming applications. There is a lack of literature data that discusses the effect of these factors for data center applications. This research work presents the performance characteristics of Cellulose media for two different manufacturers - Munters and KUUL and Munters GLASdek media Parameters that affect the efficiency of the cooling pads include surface area, thickness of pad, size of perforation of the pad, water flow rate, temperature, and relative humidity of inlet air. The effect of these factors will be studied experimentally. The experimental analysis would include variations of water flow along the length of the pad, changing the frontal air velocity and increasing the inlet air temperature. Based on the test results, it was identified that cellulose based media provides better cooling efficiency over GLASdek media.

Disciplines

Aerospace Engineering | Engineering | Mechanical Engineering

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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