Maritime Technology Supplier Sees Data Center Opportunities

[By: Hydroniq Coolers]

Ålesund-based Hydroniq Coolers, best known for delivering marine cooling systems for ships, sees significant opportunities in applying its normally hull-integrated seawater cooler to cool data centers on land.

“From an environmental perspective, it is obviously best if surplus heat from data centers can be recovered for district heating. However, we see that many data centers are today equipped with large industrial cooling fans to lower the temperature of the server farms. This is significantly more energy-intensive than using nature’s own cooling medium – water – to cool the data center,” says Inge Bøen, CEO of Hydroniq Coolers.

Provided that the data center is located near a water source, such as the ocean, a lake, or a river, it can utilize a water-based cooling solution.

Same principle on land
Marine cooling systems are typically used to reduce the temperature of a ship’s main engine and other auxiliary systems by using seawater to prevent overheating of the engine and other critical equipment. However, the principle of using a heat exchanger to cool or heat water is the same on land as at sea. 

Hydroniq Coolers has previously delivered coolers to, among others, the Hydro Sunndal aluminum plant, the Tonstad hydropower plant in Agder, and Wärtsilä’s research, product development, and manufacturing center in Vaasa, Finland.

In a data center, Hydroniq Coolers’ heat exchanger would be connected to an existing data cabinet and placed outside the data center. Here, the cooler receives water that has been heated by the data center. The heat exchanger then lowers the water temperature and sends the cooled water back into the data center, where it circulates continuously between the data center and the cooler.

“This is a highly energy-efficient and well-proven method of cooling both water and equipment. Further, it generates no noise for the surrounding environment, unlike industrial cooling fans,” adds Inge Bøen. 

Hydroniq Coolers specializes in cooling and heating seawater, which is a demanding medium to handle, but its products are equally well suited for freshwater. 

Norwegian cooperation
Hydroniq Coolers designs, manufactures, and assembles its rack-based seawater coolers at its headquarters on Ellingsøy, just outside Ålesund, Norway.

“The data center industry is becoming an important sector in Norway. They operate on Norwegian power, so I hope the industry is keen to consider Norwegian solutions for their cooling requirements. We believe there are significant opportunities in cross-industry collaboration to build a Norwegian ecosystem around the domestic data center industry,” concludes Inge Bøen.