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 | Shincci  Global

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 | Shincci  Global Drying Technology

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CyrusOne Leads the Charge for Waterless Cooling at Data Centres

Upload time:2021-08-11

Multinational Texas-based data centre developer CyrusOne is the third-largest data centre provider in the US. The firm has upwards of 50 facilities worldwide and serves more than 185 Fortune 1000 customers. 

Founded in 2001, CyrusOne has grown quickly and established itself as a leader in the data centre industry. Within the US, key markets include technology hubs like Texas, Phoenix, Chicago, and Northern Virginia. The company also has campuses across Europe, where this month it hit net zero carbon across its portfolio. Roughly 49% of CyrusOne’s $1.03 billion revenue  in 2020 was generated from enterprise businesses looking for colocation for their data centres, that is, a single facility serving multiple businesses. Hyperscalers performing high-intensity computing, such as cloud providers, comprise the other 51% of the company's revenue. 

As computing needs increase year by year and climate change exacerbates drought conditions, data centres are increasingly finding themselves in competition for water resources to meet their cooling needs. CyrusOne has set itself apart as an innovator in this regard, putting forth a concerted effort to minimise water use in its cooling systems. The company’s proprietary zero water consumption cooling system enabled its Phoenix-Chandler campus to become the first net-positive water data centre in the world,   with no water consumed for cooling purposes and only minimal water used for humidification and facility maintenance. 

GWI speaks with Kyle Myers, director of environmental health, safety and sustainability, about the company’s strategic water use within their facilities. 

How is water typically used in your data centres?
While at a typical data centre the vast majority of water consumption is used in the cooling process, our standard design  consumes zero water for cooling. We use a closed loop system that is charged with water when the system first comes online, then that water is recirculated just about in perpetuity. We have acquired facilities that do use water, and that portion of our portfolio uses different cooling technologies such as cooling towers, but our base design that is used at most of our facilities only uses water for humidification, landscaping, and domestic water. 
What is the relative ratio of new builds to acquired facilities at CyrusOne?
The data centre industry grows very quickly, for example roughly 20% a year for the last decade. Most of our facilities are relatively new and a lot of the M&A work we’ve done has been in the past. 
What is the standard process you have in the facilities that you design and build? 
In our standard system, we have raised floors with a closed loop underneath, with water recirculating in that closed loop to capture the heat. We also have air-based cooling units that dissipate the heat without using water. This system doesn’t run as efficiently from an energy perspective as some, and that is part of our trade-off, and is why everyone doesn’t automatically use this as a standard model. For us, that’s where renewables come in to help with our carbon footprint.
What are your main sources of water, and what treatment is typically required? 
We use a municipal supply in all but one facility in our whole portfolio, which is a small facility using low intensity geothermal for cooling. There are no treatment requirements in our standard system. Once our water is in that closed-loop system, it is a sealed system and only needs to be changed out every decade or so, eliminating the need for treatment like scale and corrosion inhibitors. For our facilities with cooling towers, we add biocides, rust inhibitors and anti-scaling agents, but keep these to a minimum based on the amount of TDS (total dissolved solids) we are allowed to put back into the sewer system in each municipality.  
What wastewater treatment is required at your facilities? 
There is not a single bit of wastewater treatment that we do at any of our facilities. With humidification there isn’t any liquid water to treat, and the rest of the water is gray water. We are an anomaly, because facilities that do use a lot of water will often do treatment or pretreatment, but we don't consume water like most facilities. 
However, we will look at wastewater treatment in the future when we’re not able to go with a no water consumption model, for example in some high-density facilities with many servers working continuously, as in the case of cryptocurrency mining.  In that case, we would look at increasing concentration cycles in cooling towers to reduce blowdown wastewater volumes. 
How does your water usage stack up against more conventional facilities?
We’ve seen a lot of competitive reports that suggest we’re by far the leader, at least in terms of colocations for water usage effectiveness (WUE). A research paper that came out this year estimates for the average “hyperscale” data centre, i.e. those that are exceptionally large and capable of supporting scalable operations associated with big data producing companies, the WUE average is 3.48, and we’re at 0.4. A typical facility like our Chandler (AZ) campus would be consuming in excess of 50 million gallons of water a month if we used different technology. 
How are you looking to improve water efficiency at your data centres, and what are your water conservation goals? 
We’re always looking to improve. One project we’re working on involves biodiversity as well as water effectiveness improvement by incorporating more native species into the landscaping, which is particularly effective in our southern markets like Texas and Arizona where drought-tolerant species are critical to water conservation. In our Carrollton (TX) facility, we replaced the indirect evaporative cooling (IDEC) equipment we had there previously with our standard design technology and went from 13 million gallons of water consumed in 2019 to 4.5 million gallons in 2020. 
In terms of goals, we have a formal goal of going net water positive in all our markets where water is scarce, or high-risk according to the WRI aqueduct tool. We also have a 2040 net zero carbon goal, and we’re moving rapidly on deployments.
Have you looked into any Internet of Things solutions that could help you with your water resources and wastewater management (e.g. smart meters, intelligent sensors, cloud computing)?

In a traditional evaporative (conventional) cooling system, we utilise our DCIM (Data Center Information Management system) to continually monitor our water quality,  particularly the TDS (total dissolved solids) to minimise our blow down cycles. We have sensors in the basins that monitor the TDS. Closed loop doesn’t require additional water so the reduction value is in power usage. We utilise multi-stage chillers – each chiller unit has four variable slide compressors available but we only run compressors as needed and as monitored by DCIM to maximise efficiencies.

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