Analysis of geothermal cooling for data centers

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Data centers are essential to our world -- from small server rooms to enterprise data centers and server farms**that run cloud-computing services. Driven by the explosion of digital content, big data, e-commerce, and**Internet traffic, the demand for more data centers is rapidly growing throughout the world. This trend makes**the data centre sector one of the fastest-growing consumers of electricity in the world, which is estimated to**account for 1% to 2% of the global electricity consumption. The most effective way to reduce data center**energy consumption is to reduce the power requirement of data center cooling, as the cooling system alone may**account for up to 40% in average of the energy demand of a data center.**CanShield (Canadian Shield Data Center), with 40 years of experience in the IT industry, is developing an**innovative geothermal cooling system for data centers. The geothermal cooling system will significantly**increase the sustainability and energy efficiency of data centers. The Electronics Cooling & Multiphase Flows**Lab at UBC Okanagan will collaborate with CanShield on the proposed research project focusing on the**analysis of two heat exchangers, which are the two major components of the geothermal system. The objective**is to identify key parameters and determine design spaces of the two heat exchangers.**The proposed research project will reduce energy consumption of data centers and reduce the use of air**conditioning, thereby reducing CO2 emission and avoiding ozone-depleting refrigerants. The proposed**research will open up great potential of building green data centers relying on geothermal cooling. The project**fits into the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that Canada and 192 other UN member states adopted**in September 2015.