Introduction

Low Power Cooling Technology Needed for "Green" LED Cooling, Server Cooling, and Other Electronics Cooling

The realities of finite petroleum resources and growing global energy needs along with the confidence that we are indeed experiencing global warming caused by burning fossil fuels have awakened governments and the media to "green" concerns. Both organizations and individuals have started to pay attention to the increasing cost of energy in the past few years and to the expectation that those costs will continue to rise.

The cost of transportation captures much attention today, but the cost of speedy communication, which is ever more crucial to the world economy, is not insignificant. One plausible estimate in 2007 puts the energy consumption of the Internet in the U.S. at 9.4% of total electricity use and global consumption at 5.3%. Lighting is another area where electricity use is already huge, 20% of all power consumption in the U.S., and it is certain to increase globally as developing nations become more urban. These increases support the importance of reaching beyond incremental advances toward a better low power fan to the broader search for significantly more efficient low power cooling technologies. From LED cooling to server cooling to data center cooling, the increased heat output from faster electronics is driving innovation in low power cooling.

In this paper we examine the conservation effect of using low-power cooling in the computer and lighting industries.

Abstract

Beyond the low power fan: SynJets

Today data centers are critical infrastructures to businesses, governments, medical and educational organizations--indeed, to virtually every modern social institution. Our economic growth, scientific advances, quality of life, and national security depend on using and managing computing power.

Despite huge improvements in the performance of servers (today's web server is roughly 50 times faster than last decade's model ), the total number of servers is growing, driven by the Internet, electronic records storage, and the needs of global commerce. Therefore, data centers are consuming more power each year. Other advances in computing, particularly blade servers and high-speed switching, have caused power consumption in data centers to rise even more rapidly since 2005.

A recent presentation on IT ecological sustainability laid out the need for a "library of flexible, miniature, scalable, hybrid active-passive cooling approaches that can apply across the entire range of future products." SynJets combined with heat sinks are an ideal solution of this type.

Applications

Data Center Computer Server Rack Cooling Costs

Anyone with a computer at home knows how quickly and how hot a single computer can get; consider what that means for how much heat must be dissipated in computer server rack cooling. Electronic equipment in the confined space of rack after rack in a data center generates a huge amount of heat and can malfunction if not adequately cooled. Server cooling consumes 1 to 2 watts for every watt that powers it, depending on cooling efficiency. One study found that, on average, 63% of total electricity usage went to cooling. Clearly, realizing low-power cooling in the data center can translate to big savings in energy costs.

Nuventix Server Cooling Case Study

Nuventix engineers retrofitted a 3U rack-mounted server, the 800W Newisys 4300, with a synthetic jet module and tested it for heat dissipation. The results showed that the jet increased the induced flow by 10-25% and improved heat dissipation by 8-22%, depending on fan speed.

In this test, using synthetic jets resulted in reducing the fan speed from 9000 rpm to 6500 rpm. The power consumption of the fans dropped from 108 watts to 62 watts per hour, a 46-watt savings. An added advantage is that the noise level decreased from 75 dBA to 65 dBA, essentially dropping from the level of lawn mower to that of an air conditioner. Not a "green" concern per se, but a related environmental issue.

These findings can be exploited in several ways to affect costs and power efficiency in real-world applications such as LED cooling, computer server rack cooling, and data center cooling.

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