Experimental investigation on the application of cold-mist direct evaporative cooling in data centers

The rapid development of the internet era has driven the construction of numerous data centers worldwide. In hot climate, data centers consume significant energy for cooling. Cold-mist direct evaporative cooling offers a natural cooling solution that can help reduce this energy consumption. This study investigates the temperature and relative humidity changes of natural high-temperature air after being cooled using a cold-mist direct evaporative cooling test bench. The effects of several control factors such as spray angle, spray flow rate, and air speed on the cold-mist direct evaporative cooling performance was systematically examined. The findings revealed that: (1) the optimal spray angle for cold-mist direct evaporative cooling treatment air is 65°; (2) high-temperature air between 27 °C and 37 °C can be cooled to 23.57 °C – 25.58 °C after cold-mist direct evaporative cooling treatment, with relative humidity levels of 67.0 % – 78.8 %, meeting the air supply requirements for data centers; (3) the proposed approach could reduce the data center energy consumption by 14 % – 41 %, while extending the annual natural cooling period by 3.16 % – 20.45 %.