Importance and Challenges of Gas Filtration Tech in Data Centers

 

The data center is responsible for most of the digital moves we are making in a day. Whether it is virtual desktops, data or file-sharing or communication and collaboration services, there is a high demand for data center operations. For the work nature that engineers, as well as operators, handle and the need of working round the clock to ensure that they don't collapse in any critical hour, environmental hazards can interfere a lot.

Data centers are always at risk because of the damaging environment caused by bad filtration of the outside particulates along with gaseous contaminants. Protection of that electronic equipment present in data processing centers from the harmful environment is one of the important steps for any data center manager.

Very low levels of corrosion causing gases in data centers can lead to electronic corrosion and enhanced downtime, less productivity, non-compliance with specifications and circuit failure.

Some of the primary sources of contaminations are

●      An area having high vehicular

●      Fertilizer plants

●      High-density traffic

●      Sites that are close to some dumping sites

●      Landfill sites

●      Process industries

Some of the operational challenges that data center managers face while trying to maintain the effective working of data centers are

●      Controlling gaseous contamination

●      Decreasing cost of maintenance and prohibiting loss of data by the continual working of equipment

●      Maintaining severity level of G1 according to ISA 571.04

●      Enhance the performance of IT resources and generate healthy working environments

●      Designing and equipping data centers with recent energy-effective solutions for decreasing power.

To overcome challenges caused by corrosion data center equipment must be protected by maintaining the relative humidity level below 60% and restraining the particulate and gaseous contamination level. To assist data center managers in taking the best measures Air monitoring system along with a gas phase filtration system is the need of the hour.

In a gas filtration system, the contaminated impurities present in the air are adsorbed and are then neutralized chemically. Then it is passed through some pre-filters that trap the suspended impurities. After that, the whole air stream is passed through a chemical medium to oxidize and neutralize the whole gaseous impurities. The air then passes through particulate final filters before they are passed to the data center.

Two main configurations of gas-phase filtration system are

●      Deep bed system

●      Thin bed system

Even if effective in controlling the required levels of corrosive gases in data centers, there are some limitations such as

●      Big footprints that take large commercial space

●      Very bulky and is difficult for installing in multistory locations

●      High power consumption

●      Not easy to replace the consumed media

To overcome these challenges there is some recent progress made in a gas phase filtration method. Such as the incorporation of technologies that allows the adsorption media to get impregnated with some active chemicals in the substrate micropores. They can hold a large volume of chemical for chemisorption and keep the capability to neutralize a very low concentration of gaseous contaminants.

Thus, we can say that the integration of new technology and corrosion control units like gas filtration systems helps in the removal of contaminated gases, volatile organic compounds along odorous gases from the stream of air supply.