Review on liquid cooling technologies applied to data centers

Xiao Xinwen

2022.01.17

The liquid cooling technology can improve the heat dissipation density, save energy and reduce the carbon footprint of the data center. It has positive scientific significance to carry out application researches of the liquid cooling technology in data centers. This paper presents different liquid cooling technologies and their coolants applied to data centers in detail. The research progress of liquid cooling technologies in data centers at home and abroad in recent years is reviewed from three aspects of the cooling temperature, the energy saving efficiency and the heat recovery performance. The results show that the liquid cooling technologies have high cooling temperature, obvious energy saving effect and excellent heat recovery performance. It is pointed out that finding out the reasonable distribution of temperature difference between the user side and the cold source side, improving the energy saving efficiency of the liquid cooling system under partial load, and exploring the best coupling relationship among the cooling temperature, the energy saving efficiency and the heat recovery performance will be the application research directions of liquid cooling technologies in data centers. The application of the liquid cooling technologies in data centers still needs continuous practice and in-depth exploration.