With state-of-the-art MEP infrastructure and networking equipment, NTT Communications Hong Kong Financial Data Centre Tower 2 (FDC2) is designed to be compliant to Tier IV of the Uptime Institute’s multi-tier requirements, the highest rating measuring the quality and reliability designed into a data centre.
As the mechanical, electrical, public health, IT and security engineering consultant, Arup worked with the client to devise a number of innovative solutions to help the premium mission critical facility meet the challenge of reliability and achieving both energy efficiency and design flexibility.
Unique emergency cooling strategy
A continuous cooling system is vital to achieve non-stop operation of the data centre. To deliver on FDC2’s promise of 100% uptime, we helped our client to realise a cutting-edge cooling strategy using two thermal energy storage (TES) tanks employing the water stratification principle, the first of its kind in Hong Kong.
The water stratification principle relies on a fundamental property of water. Since water density is inversely proportional to temperature, hot and cold water can be naturally kept apart with the hotter, lighter water above a thermocline separation. The designed cold-water temperature and volume can then be secured during the operation at all times and scenarios to feed the data centre cooling system with the return hot water trapped in the upper layer.
In this project, two TES tanks were designed to ensure hot-cold water separation. Using a computational fluid dynamics simulation for verification, we designed the water inlet and outlet diffuser to ensure a steady water flow for the formation of the thermocline layer and the natural water temperature stratification.