EXPERIMENTAL CHARACTERIZATION OF VERTICALLY SPLIT DISTRIBUTION WET- COOLING MEDIA USED IN DIRECT EVAPORATIVE COOLING OF DATA CENTER
Abstract
When operating in direct evaporative cooling (DEC) mode, the amount of
moisture added to a system can be controlled by frequently modulating water supply to
the wet cooling media. Though many challenges arise due to geographical and site
conditions, this concept can be applied to data centers to serve as a cost-effective
alternative for maintaining the operating temperature of the facility at any weather
condition. However, this method results in scale and mineral build up on the media
because of an irregular water distribution. To prevent the scale formation, the operators
allow the water supply continuously on the cooling media ultimately leading towards the
high consumption of facility water and significantly deteriorating the Wet cooling media
life. This challenge has been addressed for the first time by experimentally characterizing
the vertically split distribution wet cooling media. These systems allow some section of
the media to be wetted while other sections remain dry. Various configuration of vertically
staged media may be achieved by dividing the full width of the media into two, three, four
or more number of equal and unequal sections and providing individually controlled water
distribution headers. To increase the number of stages and provide smooth transition rom one stage to the other, a MATLAB code is written to find width of DEC media
sections for known total width of the media and number of sections. Here, an
experimental design to characterize the performance characteristics of a vertically split
wet cooling media which has separate water distribution setup has been presented. Apart
from relative humidity and temperature, other parameters of interests like pressure drop
across the media and saturation efficiency of the rigid media are presented. In the
unequal configuration, the media was tested for 0%, 33%, 66%, and 100%. This research
provides a potential solution towards the limitation of direct evaporative cooling in terms
of energy savings, facility water, reliability and contaminants