Heat Wheel Reduces Facility Energy

• By Justin Lee, November 17, 2008

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(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- A fairly new data center cooling technique called "heat wheel," which is also referred to as a rotary heat exchanger or Kyoto Cooling (http://www.kyotocooling.com/KyotoCooling.html), is seeing more widespread use, according to reports by Rich Miller's Data Center Knowledge.

The technology, which fine-tunes existing techniques that use outside air to improve cooling efficiency and lower energy bills, will be showcased in an upcoming demonstration at the CyberCenter data center in Amersfoort, The Netherlands.

Representatives of UpTime Technology (www.uptimetech.com), Chatsworth (www.chatsworth.com) and KPN (www.kpn.com/kpn/show/id=838669) will present at the seminar series, which will be held on December 1 to 4.

The Uptime Institute has previously explored the benefits of the heat wheel in its data center energy efficiency presentations at several of its events, including its design charette in 2007.

Uptime Technology has already filed a patent in Europe for the heat wheel, and last year, the company teamed up with Chatsworth Products to combine the technology with Chatsworth's hot-air containment to produce Kyoto Cooling.

Many heat wheel users say it improves upon free cooling techniques, but instead of transferring outside air directly into the server room, the technology momentarily combines the outside and exhaust air to facilitate an "air-to-air" heat exchange.

Though the technology has been used for several years in industrial air conditioning, this is the first time it has really been applied to data centers. Similar to the benefits of free cooling, the technology could lead to significant energy savings by reducing the need to use energy-intensive chillers for air conditioning.

European telecom KPN has already deployed the heat wheel in its Amersfoort CyberCenter facility, using the system at outside temperatures of up to 72 degrees. It effectively cools exhaust air of up to 98 degrees.

Max Alias, program manager CyberCenter Services at KPN, says it is feasible to cool its facility for 354 days a year using Kyoto Cooling, without deploying additional air-conditioning.

This enables the CyberCenter to reduce its total power consumption by 20 to 30 percent, while reducing the power consumption for cooling by more than 70 percent, creating significant savings in both costs and energy.

Despite these many benefits, the heat wheel is not without its share of flaws, the most notable being that it can only be used in climates with temperatures that would allow the technology to be used for a large portion of the year.

Gartner recently presented on the topic "The Concept of the Data center as a Living Organism" at the Data Center Summit 2008 in Amsterdam where it explored how data center managers are looking to nature for direction.

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