Schroff's cold aisle for data centres pays back in weeks

With energy costs representing an ever-increasing proportion of the operating budget, improving hot and cold aisle efficiency is a low capital cost method of providing an immediate and lasting cost saving of up to 30%, with a payback period measured in weeks. Alternatively, the increased cooling efficiency can be used to offset the increased thermal load within the data centre when additional servers are added, thereby extending the life of existing infrastructure at very low cost.

The principle is that creating physically segregated hot and cold aisles prevents the input and output air mixing, enabling the input to be at a temperature of 20 to 23°C, rather than the traditional 13 to 15°C. Accordingly, for some 90% of the time in the UK, the cooling air will be hotter than the external air, enabling air to air heat exchangers to be used on the input, primarily to control the humidity of the internal air and to maintain a closed loop, dust-free internal environment. On the output side, since it cannot recirculate back through the servers, the temperature of the exhaust air can be up to 40°C. Additional benefits include a uniform input temperature irrespective of the position of the server in the rack and lower airflow requirements; the higher output temperatures enable evaporative cooling to be used, again reducing energy consumption.

The containment family consists of wardrobe, sliding or automatic sliding doors for the ends of the aisles and variable height panels that mount to the top of the cabinets to segregate the hot aisle from the rest of the room. All elements are easy to install and an installation service is available.