Modeling of air conditioning systems for cooling of data centers

Cooling of data centers has emerged as an area of increasing importance in the field of electronics thermal management. As the packaging and power densities are steadily increasing, so will the need for efficient and reliable cooling systems. In this paper, a model of an air conditioning unit is described. The model offers considerable flexibility in terms of the ability to choose between different designs of heat exchangers (evaporators and condensers), and working media, and hence the model offers the possibility to optimize the design. The model is developed using EES (Engineering Equation Solver), a programming environment that provides the thermo-physical properties for the working media used. The heat transfer and pressure drop in the components are modeled using an integral approach, i.e. the overall behavior of each component is modeled. This approach has been proven to give adequate accuracy.