Placing the new cooling machine

07-11-2018 14:53:02

In 2017 we started using two new drycoolers to take over part of the work of the old cooling systems, namely the free cooling part. The new cooling systems are only used to cool with compression when we cannot cool with outside air or as a backup in the event of an unexpected failure in the drycoolers. All old cooling systems have now been replaced by the new cooling systems.

We waited for the last old cooling system to be due for revision before we replaced it with a new one. The old cooling system had two compressors and after 25.000 hours of operations they were ready for revision. This seemed to be the perfect moment to purchase a more environmentally friendly machine, because with the old cooling system we ran into a number of things that stood in the way of energy efficiency. For example, the part of the system that cooled with outside air consisted of elements that had to be cleaned regularly. Because we were unable to properly reach all of these elements, they remained dirty and reduced the efficiency of free cooling.

Another big difference with the old system is that the new cooling system has more power (90kW more) and has been set up differently. It has another type of compressor, for example. The old cooling system had two screw compressors and the new machines have six scroll compressors. Because of the larger number of compressors, the machine is more energy-efficient, the compressors can be switched off one by one (for example in case one of the compressors fails) and the lifespan of the cooling system is significantly longer since you can spread the load over six compressors instead of two. We can use the drycoolers for an outside temperature up to 14 degrees to cool our data centres. Since a big part of the year in the Netherlands is cool enough to use outside air for cooling, the cooling systems are not employed all year long. This also means that there is a smaller load on the machines, which increases the lifespan of the cooling systems even more.

Below you can find some pictures of the replacement of the last cooling system.