Thermoeconomic assessment of the air-cooled tropical data center through energy-saving strategies

• Main Authors: Zhou, Jing, Kanbur, Baris Burak, Le, Duc Van, Tan, Rui, Duan, Fei
• Other Authors: School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2024
• Subjects: Engineering; Tropical data center cooling; Energy-saving strategies
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/181226
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Rapid developments in the electronic information industry drive the increased energy usage and carbon emission of data center buildings, prompting the focus on the energy efficiency and environmental sustainability. Expanded operation envelopes of tropical data centers is assessed to analyze the potential for the building energy savings and carbon emission reduction through collaborative analysis of operation modes (OMs), supply air temperature (SAT), and outdoor air temperature (OAT). The OMs of compression vary with the setpoints of SAT, in which the average exergy efficiency of compressors at alternate operation mode is 6.8 % and 8.0 % lower than that of double and single compression operations. As SAT rises from 20 °C to 32 °C, the system exergoeconomic factor increases from 5.4 % to 8.0 %, and the average carbon cost decreases by 36.5 %. Additionally, with just an 8.5 % increase in exergy cost (i.e., Case 8) at OAT rising from 30 to 34 °C, the high SAT and low refrigerant charges provide considerable exergy cost advantages versus resisting the OAT fluctuations. Dynamic operation strategies are also proposed and compared to cope with the impacts of tropical environments. Compared to the 26 °C SAT baseline, the average energy savings are 9.1–14.7 %, indicating the ability to fully utilize outdoor and indoor conditions.