Challenges Faced By Data Centres
Data centres operate 24/7 and require a huge amount of water to keep their systems cool. With water scarcity becoming a real issue, and sustainability high on people's agendas, regulators, investors and customers are now demanding 'water-positive' or low-water operations.
Here are some of the ways Ice Pigging can help data centres tackle the challenges now facing them.
Water consumption and sustainability pressure in data centres
- Challenge: Data centres use significant amounts of water for cooling, particularly in evaporative or hybrid cooling systems.
- Why: As facilities grow and operate 24/7, their water demand can rival that of small towns. Regulators, investors, and customers are now demanding “water-positive” or low-water operations, forcing operators to find more efficient, closed-loop, or recyclable systems.
- Solution: Ice Pigging cleans cooling system pipes with significantly less water than conventional water flushing techniques, keeping systems running efficiently and more sustainably.
Scale formation and biofouling in data centre cooling systems
- Challenge: Recirculating cooling water systems, pipes, and heat exchangers accumulate scale, biological growth (biofilm), and corrosion debris.
- Why: Warm water, nutrients, and residual contaminants create ideal conditions for microbial growth. This reduces the system's efficiency, increases its energy use, and shortens its life.
- Solution: Ice Pigging cleans biofilm and other debris from pipelines effectively with minimal risk - the worst that could happen is the ice melts!
Downtime in data centres
- Challenge: Data centres are required to run continuously so it is vital that any downtime required for maintenance or cleaning is kept to a minimum.
- Why: Maintenance work like cleaning pipelines must not incur a long system downtime as data centres can not simply switch off. Conventional cleaning methods are disruptive and not tailored to a 24/7 infrastructure.
- Solution: Ice Pigging is quick and effective meaning that system downtimes are kept to a minimum.
Chemical use in data centres
- Challenge: Traditional cleaning and water treatment methods use chemicals that must be safely handled and disposed of often incurring extra costs to the cleaning process.
- Why: Environmental regulations are tightening, making chemical-based cleaning less acceptable.
- Solution: Our innovative Ice Pigging technology is chemical-free, therefore reducing any discharge treatment costs and being a more environmentally-friendly option
Why Data Centres Should Use Ice Pigging
With growing regulatory and reputational pressures on data centres to be more sustainable in both their energy and water use, Ice Pigging is the natural choice for any system cleaning operations.
Ice Pigging:
- Is between 10 and 100 times more effective than conventional flushing techniques.
- Enables a much quicker clean because of the force generated by the ice.
- Allows quick and relatively easy validation. Following Ice Pigging you are able to assess its success via physical inspection, by endoscope, or by assessment of a sample taken during the cleaning phase.
- Removes contamination or debris carried by the ice into waste containment, often in a single pass.
- A much reduced risk - with low pressure, no hazardous chemicals (for most applications) and a shorter exposure to risk time, the worst case scenario is ice melts.
Call us today to talk through your requirements and find out how we can support your business with our innovative Ice Pigging technology.