Everyone should know by now that datacenter humidity is very important. Dry air has lower heat transfer capability, damages electronics, and causes excessive static build up. Humid air (45% RH) has better heat transfer, is less caustic on materials, and captures airborne dust particles more efficiently.
The problem is humidification in the datacenter is expensive and time consuming. Older options have been steam electrode canisters and infrared heat lamp with water pan. Both options have significant power consumption requirements. Infrared heat or IR uses about 50% of the rated cooling power load. So if your CRAC unit uses 8KW, the IR pan system uses about 4KW. Steam electrode is about 25% of the rated cooling load, so same 2KW on a similar 8KW rated cooling unit. Annually, thats alot of money.
Maintenance is a hassle too. Steam canisters need to be replaced every 4-6 months, infrared systems need constant maintenance with cleaning mineral deposits out of the pan tray, replacing bulbs, and so on.
They are a few low power options out there. The most popular is ultrasonic humidification. Ultrasonic waves literally atomize the water droplets into vapor. It uses very little power, but unfortunately it requires significant reverse osmosis water treatment, and the water treatment canisters needs to be replaced every few months too.
The last option is mother nature. Humidification by accelerated air evaporation. This is what you may see in your house. A porous filter (sponge or paper) absorbs water for evaporation that is triggered by a fan. Why not use this in a datacenter? Well, at Quonix were designing a system around it – patent pending.
A datacenter is a closed loop system. Why get all condensate water be re-evaporated back into the room? John Von Essen, founder of Quonix, is trying to design such a system. The system uses no additional electricity, and very little water.
Cooling units already have blower fans, so why not engineer a water filter or sponge that can absorb condensate before it goes down the drain and re-evaporate it using the blower that is already blowing? Stay tuned as we continue to design and implement our first prototype.