Data Center Cooling Solutions

Air Cooling

Air cooling removes heat by circulating conditioned air through server racks and white-space environments. It is widely used in enterprise and colocation data centers and can be enhanced with various efficiency technologies.

• CRAH/CRAC Units – Air handlers that cool and distribute conditioned air inside the data hall.
• Fan Walls – High-efficiency air-moving systems providing uniform airflow across the white space.
• Evaporative Cooling (DEC/IEC) – Uses water evaporation to lower air temperature with minimal energy use.
• Rear-Door Heat Exchangers (RDHX) – Capture and cool hot rack exhaust before it enters the room.

Liquid Cooling

Liquid cooling transfers heat using water or dielectric fluids and supports much higher rack densities, including AI and HPC environments. Liquid cooling introduces cooling directly to the heat source.

Many data centers adopt hybrid architectures, combining liquid cooling for high-density zones with air-based systems elsewhere.

• Coolant Distribution Units (CDUs) – Central components in modern liquid-cooled data centers. CDUs transfer heat from server-side liquid loops to chilled-water or refrigerant systems and provide scalable capacity for high-density racks and AI workloads.
• Direct-to-Chip Cooling – Liquid circulates through cold plates mounted on CPUs/GPUs for efficient, localized heat removal.
• Warm-Water Liquid Cooling – Liquid cooling loops designed to operate at elevated supply temperatures, reducing mechanical cooling dependency and enabling efficient heat reuse.
• Rear-Door Liquid Cooling – Liquid-cooled rear-door units remove heat at the rack boundary.
• Immersion Cooling – Servers submerged in dielectric fluid for maximum heat transfer.

Heat Rejection

Heat-rejection systems remove heat from the data center’s air or liquid loops and discharge it to the outside environment. These facility-side systems are essential for both air-cooled and liquid-cooled architectures.

• Chillers (Air- or Water-Cooled) – Mechanical cooling units that use refrigerant to remove heat and deliver chilled water to the data center. Chillers supply cold water to CRAHs, CDUs, and liquid-cooled racks, forming the core of most heat-rejection and facility cooling architectures.
• Dry Coolers – Air-cooled heat-rejection units used for liquid loops or free-cooling operation to reduce mechanical cooling demand.
• Thermosyphon Heat Rejection (Refrigerant-Based) – Pump-free, refrigerant-based systems that transfer heat using natural phase change, reducing compressor dependency and supporting efficient air- or liquid-cooled architectures.
• Cooling Towers / Adiabatic Coolers – Support high-efficiency water- or evaporative-based cooling.
• Heat-Reuse Integrations – Transfer waste heat to district heating networks or industrial processes.

Emerging Cooling Technologies

Cooling technologies are evolving to support sustained density growth, advanced AI workloads and integrated energy strategies.

• Two-Phase Direct-to-Chip Cooling – Uses evaporating refrigerant or dielectric fluid at the cold plate for extremely high heat-flux removal.
• Advanced Immersion Cooling – Immersion systems that use evaporative fluids for extreme-density HPC and AI factory environments.
• AI-Driven Cooling Controls – Software systems that optimize temperature, flow, PUE, WUE, and uptime using machine learning
• Digital Twin Modeling – Virtual models that simulate thermal performance, airflow, and energy use to support design optimization, capacity planning, and predictive operations.