Facebook Inc. today revealed a new data center cooling system designed for harsh climates that it claims can reduce its water usage by up to 90 percent.

Like most data center operators, Facebook has traditionally built the majority of its facilities in cooler regions where the environmental conditions ensure its servers and systems can be kept at an optimal temperature for a minimal cost. It does this because the giant server farms that keep its enormous social network up and running generate an incredible amount of heat, and they must be kept cool to prevent them from breaking down.

As such, a cooler climate makes sense from an operational point of view, since it’s much cheaper and easier to keep servers cool if it’s already cold outside, after all. But there are geographical advantages to operating data centers in warmer and more arid climates too, because they allow Facebook to deliver its services to those areas with lower latency.

With that in mind, Facebook has been quietly developing a more energy-efficient cooling system specifically for those harsher climates.

Facebook said its new StatePoint Liquid Cooling system is based on evaporative cooling technology that produces cold water instead of cold air. The system allows it to build data centers with a high degree of water and energy efficiency in locations where traditional direct cooling systems aren’t feasible, such as areas with high levels of dust, extreme humidity or elevated salinity.

The SPLC system, developed in partnership with a company called Nortek Air Solutions LLC, can reduce Facebook’s water usage by up to 20 percent in hot and humid climates and up to 90 percent in cooler climes, Facebook thermal engineer Veerendra Mulay said in a blog post.

“The system will not only protect our servers and buildings from environmental factors, but also eliminate the need for mechanical cooling in a wider range of climate conditions and provide additional flexibility for data center design, requiring less square footage to cool effectively,” Mulay wrote.

The SPLC system works by using something called a liquid-to-air energy exchanger, which cools water by evaporating it through a membrane separation layer. The cold water that’s produced is then used to cool the air inside the data center in order to keep Facebook’s servers at the optimum temperature, Mulay said. One of the system’s main advantages is that the membrane layer prevents cross-contamination between the water and air stream, thereby keeping the water clean and resulting in reduced maintenance.

The system can operate in three different modes depending on the climate in order to maximize energy efficiency, and can be connected to a variety of cooling delivery systems, including fan coil walls, air handlers, in-row coolers, rear door heat exchangers and chip cooling.

Mulay said Facebook will continue to use its traditional direct cooling technology in most of its facilities. However, the SPLC system gives Facebook the option of building data centers in more extreme climates that were previously considered untenable.

Main image: Pexels/Pixabay