International. The company 3M has shown the possibility of reducing energy consumption in data centers by 95% with immersion cooling technology.
The company has presented this technology through a short documentary entitled 'Data Driven. Advancing A Sustainable Future' (Data Management. Moving towards a sustainable future). The short shows how to close the ecological gap generated by data that, currently, doubles every two years, making its management a challenge.
3M has recently joined other industry leaders in the Open Compute Project (OCP), which is on a mission to close the energy efficiency gap in the data center. "It's wonderful to be able to collaborate with multiple organizations," said Rocky Bullock, CEO of the Open Compute Project. "The industry has a wide variety of tools and expertise and it's fantastic to see how these capabilities come together to accelerate progress."
Michael E. Garceau, data center business manager at 3M, stressed that data management "needs transformative innovations that support Big Data applications" and stressed that "immersion cooling can both enable data management in the future and ensure its environmental sustainability."
Immersion cooling
About 38 percent of the electricity consumed by a data center goes to cooling electronics. Immersion cooling uses a small amount of the energy of an air conditioning system. The most efficient methods can achieve a PUE of less than 1.02, compared to a PUE from 1.1 to 2.0 with traditional cooling in the data center, eliminating chillers and air conditioning units.
Immersion cooling enables a tight configuration of components in less space than typical air conditioning systems. It allows to provide more than 100 kilowatts of computing power per square meter and occupies ten times less space. With this type of cooling, it is possible to increase processing capacity and decrease latency with less deterioration of the electronics.
"Instead of separating the electronics to be able to cool it, the 3M alternative allows it to be combined with immersion cooling," added Laura Nereng, electronics & energy business group sustainability leader at 3M. "It therefore provides a practical solution that can be used anywhere."
Source: www.eseficiencia.es
