-
Home
-
Service
-
Application notes
Pressure Transducers Help Cool Server Farms
WIKA’s refrigeration and air conditioning pressure transmitter is not just designed for refrigeration and AC units. It is also a part of many organizations’ IT infrastructures and in many ways is as important as the computers themselves. Refrigeration and HVAC for computer farm cooling systems all utilize thermodynamic refrigeration cycles and temperature and pressure measurement and control.
The R-1 pressure transmitter can be found in server farms, which are clusters or collections of computer servers that link together to do more than a single server can do. They also provide backup for servers within the farm. Server farms have come to replace mainframe computers for large databases and are used extensively in web hosting, finite element analysis, 3D modeling and rendering, and business networks.
So what role do pressure transmitters play in a server farm? Server farms are rated for efficiency on the energy required to cool the server farm per unit of energy consumed by the server farm. Some large server farms estimate one watt of power to cool a server farm per two watts of power consumed by the server farm itself. It’s easy to see the importance of increasing cooling efficiency.Pressure transducers are used for computer server farm cooling in HVAC and refrigeration in specialty refrigeration applications for pressure measurement and control at the evaporator outlet as well as pressure measurement and control at the compressor inlet.
The refrigeration cycle operates as follows:
- Cool, low-pressure, gaseous refrigerant enters the compressor.
- Hot, high-pressure gaseous refrigerant exits the compressor and moves to the condenser.
- Once there, the hot refrigerant releases heat outside the system.
- The hot, high-pressure liquid then leaves the condenser coil and enters the expansion valve, which reduces the pressure and temperature of the refrigerant.
- The cold (low-pressure) refrigerant absorbs inside heat to cool the system environment, and refrigerant leaves the condenser as a cool, low-pressure gas.
- The cycle repeats.
Refrigeration superheat is the difference in refrigerant temperature at the evaporator outlet and the boiling temperature of the refrigerant at a measured pressure. The R-1 pressure transducer monitor the pressure at the evaporator outlet and compressor inlet to accurately determine the superheat and increase refrigeration efficiency.
Specialty refrigeration for computer server farm cooling in HVAC and refrigeration applications call for pressure transducer compatibility with standard refrigerants. The R-1 pressure transmitter has been designed specifically for this type of application, ensuring accuracy, reliability, and durability. This pressure transducer is also compatible with most refrigerants in use today.
To learn more about how WIKA’s pressure transducer cool server farms, contact WIKA at 1-780-463-7035 or info.ca@wika.com.