Data center cooling

Two from Data Center Knowledge:

The Evolution of Facebook’s Data Center Cooling (Dec 4, 2012) –

Facebook is making changes in a phase of its fresh air cooling system that manages humidity and heat removal. In the first building of its  data center campus in North Carolina, Facebook used a misting system, with small nozzles attached to water pipes that sprayed a fine mist across the air pathway, cooling the air and adding humidity.  …

In the second data center on its North Carolina campus, Facebook has replaced the misters with an evaporative cooling system featuring adiabatic media. Warm air enters through the media, which is dampened by a small flow of water that enters at the top and flows down the membrane. The air is cooled as it passes through the wet media.

U.S. Defense Department to Cool Servers with Hot Water (Dec 11, 2012) –

“The Department of Defense has become very serious about improving data center efficiency, and they are seeking new approaches to address this mission-critical problem,” said Andre Eriksen, Asetek’s CEO and founder. “Hot water direct-to-chip liquid-cooling is a powerful approach that can capture more than 80% of the heat generated by a data center and remove it from the building, where it can be cooled for free by ambient air or even reused for building heating and hot water. No power what so ever goes in to actively chilling the water.”