Nortek Air Solutions has installed its patented StatePoint technology in two buildings at the Facebook data centre in Clonee, Ireland.
Facebook announced: “The Clonee Data Center will continue to be one of the most advanced, energy efficient data centres in the world and will be supported by 100% renewable energy.”
The StatePoint system uses a liquid-to-air membrane exchanger in which water evaporates through a membrane separation layer to cool the data centre.
“This new exchanger technology addresses some of the fundamental disadvantages of open spray and wetted media evaporative cooling systems and opens up new possibilities for high-performance liquid cooling in data centres and other applications,” explains Philip LePoudre, Fellow Engineer at Nortek.
The liquid-to-air membrane exchanger prevents cross-contamination between the water and air streams, greatly reducing the risk of waterside fouling and aerosol carryover in the exhaust air stream. In addition, the StatePoint Liquid Cooling system has good water usage efficiency while still maintaining energy efficiency.
“We are excited and proud to be part of the innovations used by Facebook to support their world-class levels of efficiency,” said Bruno Biasiotta, CEO of Nortek.
StatePoint Technology Unit showing intake and exhaust dampers, filters, coils, fans, and the membrane exchanger
From 2015, Nortek Air Solutions worked closely with the Facebook engineering team to develop StatePoint Technology. The goal was to engineer a new cooling solution for data centres in certain climates. Facebook and Nortek Air Solutions announced the technology in June of 2018.
Since then other data centres have received the technology, including one in Singapore, Facebook's fifteenth data centre and the first engineered by the company in Asia.
