Microchannel Heat Pipe (MHPTM) Technology for Computer Cooling
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IT IS OUR HONOR THAT QUANTACOOL HAS SIGNED A MARKETING AGREEMENT WITH CLOUD9 EDGE TECHNOLOGIES TO REPRESENT THE GREATEST HEAT REMOVALTECHNOLOGY IN THE DATA CENTER & EDGE SPACE QUANTACOOL MHP ™ PASSIVE 2-PHASE COOLING FOR COMPUTERS & DATA CENTERS QUANTACOOL CORPORATION STEVEN G. SCHON, P.E. CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER QUANTACOOL.COM © 2019 QUANTACOOL CORPORATION 64 WATKIN AVENUE, CHADDS FORD, PA 19317 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY QuantaCool’s patented Microchannel Heat Pipe (MHP™) and technology provides highly efficient, reliable, and environmentally friendly cooling for computers and data centers. MHP reduces cooling infrastructure costs because it operates passively, directly rejecting the waste heat to the air or un-chilled cooling water. MHP can transport heat outside the computer room, reducing or eliminating the need for energy-intensive, mechanically complex, and expensive intermediate systems, such as chillers, air conditioners, pumps or high-power blowers. MHP is modular and scalable, from single processors to the multi-kilowatt heat loads of multiple server racks. The microchannel cold plates offer design and mounting flexibility; high capacities are achieved by manifolding more units, offering the economies of mass production. Cold plates can also be integrated into the structure of the heat-generating equipment itself, as the base for electronic components. MHP can take advantage of the vapor to recover and upgrade the waste heat to further reduce energy use. In addition to providing better cooling performance than state-of-the-art water-based systems, MHP improves both safety and reliability. MHP operates passively, without pumps or water; circulation of the working fluid (an inert refrigerant) is driven by the waste heat itself and by gravity, and is self-regulating in response to the heat load. Moreover, the operation is silent. The fluid is non-toxic, non-flammable, and non-conductive, eliminating the risks associated with water cooling; in the event of a leak, the fluid evaporates away harmlessly. Over-clocking computers to run faster requires more power and produces more heat. MHP allows higher over-clocking because the thermal performance exceeds that of conventional heat pipes and the best water-cooled systems. For data centers, it enables higher computational density, e.g. using smaller servers and more processors per server, since the cold plates are more compact and do not require the chassis airflow needed with conventional coolers. Large-scale applications such as data centers and telecom facilities can be cooled more cost- effectively and operate reliably at higher intensities using MHP technology. Because it has no moving parts, MHP provides an ideal cooling solution for high-density unattended installations such as edge computing. QUANTACOOL.COM © 2019 QUANTACOOL CORPORATION PAGE 2 OF 18 64 WATKIN AVENUE, CHADDS FORD, PA 19317 CONTENTS MHP™ TECHNOLOGY ................................................................................................................. 4 Operating Principle ..................................................................................................................... 4 Superior Heat Transfer ................................................................................................................ 6 Multiplexing capability ............................................................................................................... 7 Corroboration Studies ................................................................................................................. 9 BENEFITS .................................................................................................................................... 10 Reduced Cooling Costs ............................................................................................................. 10 Safety and Environmental Benefits .......................................................................................... 11 Increased Computer Performance, Life, and Efficiency ........................................................... 12 Maintenance & Operational Benefits ........................................................................................ 12 Increased Infrastructure Efficiency ........................................................................................... 13 Flexibility and Scalability ......................................................................................................... 14 Reduced Insurance Costs .......................................................................................................... 15 Opportunity for Energy Savings and Recovery ........................................................................ 15 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................. 18 QUANTACOOL.COM © 2019 QUANTACOOL CORPORATION PAGE 3 OF 18 64 WATKIN AVENUE, CHADDS FORD, PA 19317 MHP™ TECHNOLOGY OPERATING PRINCIPLE MHP systems use compact microfluidic high-flux heat absorbers (cold plates) relying on phase- change principles (boiling, evaporation) to remove and dissipate large quantities of heat from high-intensity sources. The heat is passively and remotely rejected to ambient cooling media. It operates on the principle of a thermosyphon, like a coffee percolator (see Figure 1). The heat itself drives the flow of the coolant through boiling circulation, eliminating the need for a pump or external power sources. Because it is completely passive, using gravity and not pumps, there are no moving parts that can break and lead to downtime. The coolant working fluids are common refrigerants: non-flammable, environmentally benign, and electrically non-conductive. Figure 1: MHP – Operating Principle (Thermosyphon Boiler) The heat is transferred directly to the final external cooling medium (typically ambient air or un- chilled cooling water) via the condenser, at temperatures within a few degrees of the external QUANTACOOL.COM © 2019 QUANTACOOL CORPORATION PAGE 4 OF 18 64 WATKIN AVENUE, CHADDS FORD, PA 19317 coolant. This is thermodynamically more efficient and does not require the additional energy inputs that are required with the indirect cooling or intermediate heat transfer loops which are typically used in data centers. (Compare the conventional data center arrangement in Figure 2, vs. the direct 2-phase cooling MHP arrangement in Figure 3). Figure 2: Conventional Indirect Data Center Cooling Chain Figure 3: Direct 2-Phase Cooling Eliminates Intermediary Heat Hand-offs QUANTACOOL.COM © 2019 QUANTACOOL CORPORATION PAGE 5 OF 18 64 WATKIN AVENUE, CHADDS FORD, PA 19317 SUPERIOR HEAT TRANSFER MHP melds the outstanding heat transfer of microchannel heat exchangers with the passive evaporative heat pipe principle and is described in detail in US Patent 9,157,687. A comparison of the calculated device temperatures and relative heat transfer for MHP vs. other cooling methods is shown in Figure 4 (note that lower temperatures at high heat fluxes are better). Figure 4: MHP vs. Conventional Cooling Heat Transfer Performance A typical cold plate, suitable for cooling central processing units (CPUs) or graphic processing units (GPUs) is shown in Figure 5. Note that it is compact enough to fit inside 1U and blade servers. Figure 5: Cold plate for CPUs or GPUs QUANTACOOL.COM © 2019 QUANTACOOL CORPORATION PAGE 6 OF 18 64 WATKIN AVENUE, CHADDS FORD, PA 19317 MULTIPLEXING CAPABILITY Unlike conventional wick- or loop-type heat pipes, where the condensers are connected one-to- one with the heat absorbers, MHP allows multiple cold plates to be connected to a single common condenser, via manifolds for the coolant supply and return lines (see Figure 6). This reduces costs, through the economy of scale. Figure 6: Cold Plate / Condenser Configurations – Dedicated or Multiplexed Options In PolarRak™ systems for data servers, the manifolds are supplied by a reservoir immediately above the highest cold plate (providing the gravitational liquid head needed to drive the circulation). However, the condenser, which only handles the vapor, can be mounted arbitrarily far away; if mounted outside the electronics room, e.g. on the roof, the condenser can be cooled by ambient cooling media (e.g. air or cooling tower water), rejecting the heat without the need for power- and capital-intensive chilling or air conditioning systems. Conversely, MHP cold plates can be designed to cool multiple hot zones of differing sizes and heat fluxes, using internal manifolding to many discrete microchannel evaporative areas. QuantaCool successfully used this approach in a PolarMax™ system for power electronics, with a QUANTACOOL.COM © 2019 QUANTACOOL CORPORATION PAGE 7 OF 18 64 WATKIN AVENUE, CHADDS FORD, PA 19317 single cold plate handling over 2.5 kW from a device with more than 30 active heat-generating components. A schematic of a data center server rack configuration, with multiple servers rejecting the heat to a common condenser outside the server room, is shown in Figure 7. Condenser Air or un-chilled cooling water Coolant vapor Server Room 2-phase coolant Liquid coolant Liquid Return Header Reservoir Server Rack (gravity flow) (Server out of service) Supply Header Header Supply Microchannel Evaporative Cold Plate Liquid coolant Liquid Hot Device (Processor) Dry-break quick-connectors Figure 7: Schematic Configuration – MHP Cooling of a Server Rack QUANTACOOL.COM © 2019 QUANTACOOL CORPORATION PAGE 8 OF 18 64 WATKIN AVENUE, CHADDS FORD, PA