Why Are Valves Critical For Data Centre Operations?
Growing Digital Demand
As the world has become more connected and with an expanding population the number of internet users has more than doubled since 2010.
More and more demands are made on digital services in everyday life, ranging from making payments and accessing social media to internet connected devices and smart buildings.
As a result data centres serve a critical infrastructure role in providing these services without interruption.
Any downtime or system failure of these facilities can cause significant disruption to services and often creates headline news.
So where do valves come into the equation?
Cooling
With such large quantities of data being transferred, now measured in zettabytes, a huge amount of cooling energy is required to maintain optimum server room temperatures with the immense heat being generated by the server equipment
Cooling can often require up to 50% of the total power consumption of a data centre.
In order to maintain the required room temperature, a stable and reliable fluid control system is essential. This can be achieved through the use of valve types such as Pressure Independent Control Valves (PICVs). These allow for accurate flow control under varying system dynamic loads, coupled with an actuator to respond to demand or switchover regimes efficiently. Data centres can often be subject to future expansions, the PICVs allow for these pieces of equipment to be integrated without the need to revisit the commissioning of already installed items, therefore saving time and money.
Maintenance
Data centre equipment needs to be safely maintained so reliable isolation valves are essential for separating sections of the cooling system that serve a block of servers.
Butterfly valves are a critical part of the design and specification process and an ideal solution to isolate parts of the cooling system.
Crane FS offer a huge range of butterfly valves in various sizes and materials that can be operated via either a lever, gearbox or actuator, providing full isolation.
And for peace of mind, every Crane FS butterfly valve is 100% production tested to BS EN 12266-1.