APC: Hot Aisle Containment. APC by Schneider Electric presented one of its product innovations at CeBIT 2008: Hot Aisle Containment.

When dealing with high-availability of data and energy efficiency systems, the way of cooling in data centres or server rooms is crucial. As a globally present specialist for power and cooling solutions APC relies on Hot Aisle Containment for maximum cooling effect at lowest energy consumption.

The company’s solutions make it easy to switch to Hot Aisle Containment using in row cooling equipment: an open, low-density design can be quickly shifted to a high density solution on demand. Through the separation of warm and cold air it is possible to achieve a very specific performance increase with regard to packing density and energy efficiency of the data centre.

Such solutions also pay off quickly regarding investment and operating costs. The cold air being distributed horizontally from the IT equipment the server room ist quickly brought down to the optimum temperature. This starts about 23 degrees and interacts with the flow temperature of the cold water supply of at least 12 degrees with a divergence of 6 degrees.

Looking at the climate aspect it is also particularly cost efficient when the whole cooling setup is linked with free heat exchangers, as well as scalable refrigeration machines.

A higher flow temperature reduces the risk of condensate forming and the refrigeration requires less energy. Thus the room temperature can be maintained with less effort.