Performance Characteristics Of Single Effect Lithium Bromide/ Water Absorption Chiller For Small Data Centers

Abstract

A medium data center consists of servers performing operations such as file sharing, collaboration and email. There are a large number of small and medium data centers across the world which consume more energy and are less efficient when compared to large data center facilities of companies such as GOOGLE, APPLE and FACEBOOK. Such companies are making their data center facilities more environmental friendly by employing renewable energy solutions such as wind and solar to power the data center or in data center cooling. This not only reduces the carbon footprint significantly but also decreases the costs incurred over a period of time.Cooling of data center play a vital role in proper functioning of the servers. It is found that cooling consumes about 50% of the total power consumed by the data center. Traditional method of cooling includes the use of mechanical compression chillers which consume lot of power and is not desirable. In order to eliminate the use of mechanical compressor chillers renewable energy resources such as solar and wind should be employed. One such technology is solar thermal cooling by means of absorption chiller which is powered by solar energy. The absorption chiller unit can be coupled with either flat plate or evacuated tube collectors in order to achieve the required inlet temperature for the generator of the absorption chiller unit. In this study a modular data center is considered having a cooling load requirement of 23kw. The performance characteristics of a single stage Lithium Bromide/ water refrigeration is presented in this study considering the cooling load of 23kw. Performance characteristics of each of the 4 heat exchangers within the unit is discussed which helps in customizing the unit according to the users’ specific needs. This analysis helps in studying the importance of different properties such as the effect of inlet temperatures of hot water for generator, inlet temperatures of cooling water for absorber and condenser and outlet chilled water temperatures of the evaporator.