Cooling system saves data centers more than a billion gallons of water (video)

In today’s data center, minimizing annual energy usage while maintaining reliability is increasingly important. While chilled-water loops operating at elevated temperatures supported by water-side economizers have helped to decrease energy usage, new innovations are changing how the data center industry thinks about direct expansion (DX) cooling infrastructures with respect to efficiency, scalability and reliability.

The deployment of Emerson’s Liebert DSE pumped refrigerant economization system in North America has saved more than 1.4 billion gallons of water in the last 36 months, compared to using data center chilled water cooling systems, and is expected to save an additional 1 billion gallons of water in 2016, according to the company.

The Liebert DSE system is the first pumped refrigerant economization system for use in data centers, and it uses no water and introduces no outside air into the data center. Companies deploying the Liebert DSE cooling system have reduced energy usage by up to 50 percent, compared to using legacy systems.

J.P. Valiulis of Emerson spoke at AHR 2016 about the ways in which Emerson’s refrigerant economizer can be a difference-maker in water and energy conservation.