As the mechanical, electrical, plumbing (MEP), IT, and security engineering consultant, Arup worked with the client to devise a number of innovative solutions to help the premium mission-critical facility meet the challenge of reliability and achieve both energy efficiency and design flexibility.
Unique emergency cooling strategy
A continuous cooling system is vital to achieve non-stop operation of the data center. To deliver on FDC2’s promise of 100% uptime, we helped our client realize a cutting-edge cooling strategy using two thermal energy storage (TES) tanks employing the water stratification principle, the first of its kind in Hong Kong.
The water stratification principle relies on a fundamental property of water. Since water density is inversely proportional to temperature, hot and cold water can be naturally kept apart with the hotter, lighter water above a thermocline separation. The designed cold-water temperature and volume can then be secured during operation at all times and in all scenarios to feed the data center cooling system, with the return hot water trapped in the upper layer.
In this project, two TES tanks were designed to ensure hot-cold water separation. Using a computational fluid dynamics simulation for verification, we designed the water inlet and outlet diffuser to ensure a steady water flow for the formation of the thermocline layer and the natural water temperature stratification.