Investigation on application of plate-tube evaporative condensating technology for data centres in the northwest of China

The rapid development of data center leads to a rapid increase in energy consumption. In this paper, the plate and tube evaporative condenser is proposed for the water-cooled chiller and the data center cooling system to improve the energy efficiency in hot and dry summer and avoid icing in cold winter. The chiller can operate in the wet mode for compressor refrigeration and the dry mode for free cooling with the coefficient of performance (COP) of 5.2 in wet mode and up to 33.3 in dry mode. Furthermore, the system is applied in a data center in Ulumiqi, which is located in the dry and cold region and its ambient air temperature can vary from −32 °C to 45 °C throughout the year. The actual operation results show that the power usage effectiveness (PUE) value of the whole data centre is 1.349 in June, 1.229 in December, and 1.320 as the annual average, which is stable and efficient for five consecutive years. These results ensure the proposed system is an important technical solution for energy saving and emission reduction in data centres in cold regions.