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As data centres grow and evolve, energy-efficient cooling becomes a top priority for operators. BladeRoom’s Direct and Indirect Fresh-Air Cooling Solutions offer a highly efficient, sustainable method for cooling data centres while achieving industry-leading PUEPower Utilization Effectiveness (PUE) is the primary metric for measuring the energy efficiency of a data centre. Calculated as the ratio of total facility energy to IT equipment energy, it provides insights into how much power is used for non-IT functions, such as cooling and po...Learn more. Whether you need direct air cooling for minimal mechanical assistance or indirect air coolingIndirect Air Cooling is a data centre cooling technique that leverages external air to cool IT equipment without directly introducing it into the data hall. Instead, heat exchangers or indirect cooling systems transfer thermal energy between indoor and outdoor air. This approach ...Learn more to shield sensitive equipment from external air, BladeRoom provides best-in-class solutions tailored to your company’s needs.

Rather than re-circulating and cooling the hot air from the IT as with traditional data centre cooling, a BladeRoom data centre operates like a serverA server is a specialized computer designed to process requests, store data, and manage resources for other devices or applications in a network. In data centres, servers are the backbone of IT operations, supporting functions such as cloud computing, storage, and web hosting. Se...Learn more by drawing in highly filtered fresh air, intelligently matching air supply to IT demand and exhausting or partially recirculating warm air from the data centre as required.

Direct Fresh-Air Cooling: Sustainable and Cost-Efficient

Direct fresh-air cooling leverages ambient outside air to cool data halls directly. By drawing in cool air from the environment and circulating it through the data hallA data hall is the primary operational area within a data centre, housing IT equipment such as servers, storage devices, and networking hardware. It is designed for optimal cooling, power distribution, and accessibility to maintain peak performance and reliability. Data halls are...Learn more, BladeRoom’s Direct Air Optimiser can significantly reduce energy consumption by minimising the need for mechanical cooling systems.

Evaporative and free coolingFree Cooling uses ambient external air to cool data centre environments, minimizing the need for mechanical cooling systems. This energy-efficient approach leverages natural temperature differentials to maintain optimal conditions within the facility. Free cooling can include tec...Learn more enables the IT equipment to be cooled with supply air temperatures of between 18°C and 30°C for the entire year in the UK without the need for mechanical cooling across a range of IT loads, still performing efficiently at 15% utilisation of racks.

Key Features:

  • Cooling Capacity: Supports rack densities of up to 50kW.
  • PUE and WUE Performance: Reduces the overall energy and water required for cooling by using natural airflow, which can result in a PUE and WUE significantly lower than industry averages.
  • Year-Round Efficiency: In suitable climates, direct air cooling systems can operate throughout the year with little to no mechanical intervention, delivering continuous energy savings.

Indirect Fresh-Air Cooling: Maximum Efficiency Without External Air Exposure

Indirect fresh-air cooling uses the same principle of leveraging ambient air, but without allowing external air to come into direct contact with the IT equipment. This is particularly useful for environments where air contamination or high humidity may be a concern.

In indirect systems, heat exchangers transfer thermal energy between the external and internal environments without physically mixing the air. This ensures data halls remain sealed, while still benefiting from the energy savings associated with fresh-air cooling.

Key Features:

  • High Efficiency: Indirect cooling systems can still achieve low PUE by reducing mechanical cooling loads.
  • Adaptability: Ideal for environments where air quality or extreme weather conditions make direct air cooling impractical.
  • No Contamination Risk: Sensitive equipment is protected from contaminants like dust, pollution, or humidity, as no outside air enters the data hall.

The BladeRoom Advantage: Integrated Fresh-Air Cooling Solutions

Whether you require direct or indirect fresh-air cooling, BladeRoom’s systems are designed to optimise energy consumption while ensuring the reliability and uptime of our data centres. By integrating fresh-air cooling with BladeRoom’s patented Match Technology™, we can deliver an optimised airflow solution that adjusts dynamically to changing heat loads and external temperatures, ensuring constant efficiency.

Match Technology

BladeRoom’s Match Technology acts as the brain of the data centre, automatically responding to the external ambient conditions, as well as the changing IT environments, to ensure that cooling supply air precisely matches IT demand. By intelligently linking air supply to air demand, we ensure there are no hot spots, and no over cooling. Conditioned air is directed to exactly where it is needed so that imbalanced IT loads cause no loss of efficiency, and air is never wasted in areas where it is not required.

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