Data center cooling and heat reuse

Data Centre Cooling & Heat Recovery - Frequently Asked Questions

Why is thermal management so critical in modern data centres?

Modern data centres - particularly those supporting AI workloads, cloud computing, and high-performance computing (HPC) - generate enormous and increasingly concentrated heat loads. Servers and processors must be kept within precise temperature ranges to operate reliably and at full performance. If heat is not removed efficiently, it leads to thermal throttling, hardware failure, and unplanned downtime. As rack densities continue to rise - with AI-optimised racks now commonly exceeding 50-100 kW per rack compared to the traditional 5–10 kW - conventional air cooling is increasingly unable to cope, making liquid cooling solutions essential.

What cooling solutions does Alfa Laval offer for data centres?

Alfa Laval provides a range of highly efficient heat transfer solutions specifically suited to data centre cooling infrastructure, including:

• Gasketed and brazed plate heat exchangers for liquid cooling loops and free cooling systems
• Compabloc welded plate heat exchangers for high-pressure or high-temperature applications
• Cooling distribution units (CDUs) that interface between facility cooling water and server-level liquid cooling loops
• Heat recovery systems that capture waste heat from the cooling process for reuse

Alfa Laval’s heat transfer technology is already deployed in data centre facilities globally, bringing the same engineering rigour that has made it a world leader in industrial heat transfer to one of the fastest-growing infrastructure sectors.

How does liquid cooling compare to traditional air cooling in data centres?

Air cooling has been the dominant data centre cooling method for decades, but it has fundamental physical limitations. Moving heat via air requires large volumes of airflow, significant fan energy, and considerable floor space for CRAC/CRAH units. Liquid cooling is up to 3,500 times more thermally conductive than air, meaning it can remove heat far more efficiently, in a much smaller footprint, and with considerably less energy.

For modern high-density deployments - particularly AI and GPU-intensive workloads - liquid cooling is rapidly becoming the only viable option. Alfa Laval’s plate heat exchangers are central to liquid cooling architectures, providing the highly efficient heat transfer interface between server-level cooling loops and facility-side chilled water or free cooling systems.

What is free cooling and how can Alfa Laval technology support it?

Free cooling is a strategy that uses naturally cool ambient air or water - rather than energy-intensive mechanical refrigeration - to cool a data centre’s cooling water circuit. When outdoor temperatures are low enough, free cooling can meet the full cooling demand of a facility, dramatically reducing energy consumption and PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness).

Alfa Laval’s plate heat exchangers are ideally suited to free cooling applications. Their high thermal efficiency means that even a small temperature differential between the ambient source and the cooling loop can be exploited effectively - extending the number of hours per year that free cooling is viable and reducing reliance on chillers. In northern European climates, well-designed free cooling systems using Alfa Laval heat exchangers can operate without mechanical refrigeration for the majority of the year.

Can waste heat from data centres be recovered and reused?

Yes - and this is one of the most significant sustainability opportunities in the data centre sector. Data centres are essentially large heat generators, and that heat - rather than being rejected to atmosphere - can be captured and put to productive use. Common applications for recovered data centre heat include district heating networks, domestic hot water systems, agricultural heating (such as greenhouses), and industrial process heating.

Alfa Laval has extensive experience in heat recovery system design, and its heat exchangers are used in data centre heat reuse projects across Europe. With the right system design, a data centre can transition from being a net energy consumer to an active contributor to local or district energy networks - supporting both sustainability targets and, in some cases, generating a revenue stream from heat export.

What is PUE and how does Alfa Laval technology help improve it?

PUE - Power Usage Effectiveness - is the standard metric for data centre energy efficiency. A PUE of 1.0 would mean all energy consumed goes directly to IT equipment, with zero overhead. The global average PUE is currently around 1.5, meaning 50% more energy is consumed than the IT load alone requires - largely due to cooling infrastructure.

Alfa Laval’s high-efficiency heat exchangers directly reduce the energy overhead of cooling by maximising heat transfer with minimal pressure drop, enabling free cooling to be used for more hours per year, and reducing the load on mechanical refrigeration. For hyperscale and colocation operators under pressure to reduce PUE and meet sustainability commitments, this translates into measurable reductions in both energy cost and carbon emissions.

How does Alfa Laval technology support immersion cooling systems?

Immersion cooling - where servers are submerged directly in a dielectric fluid - is an emerging technology for the most extreme heat density applications, particularly AI training clusters. The dielectric fluid absorbs heat directly from the hardware and must then transfer that heat to a facility cooling circuit.

Alfa Laval’s compact, high-efficiency plate heat exchangers are well suited to this heat rejection role, providing an efficient and reliable interface between the immersion cooling fluid loop and the building’s chilled water or free cooling system. As immersion cooling adoption accelerates - driven by the thermal demands of next-generation AI hardware - Alfa Laval’s heat transfer expertise positions it as a natural partner for data centre operators and system integrators working with this technology.

Are Alfa Laval data centre cooling solutions suitable for hyperscale facilities as well as smaller edge data centres?

Yes. Alfa Laval’s product portfolio spans a very wide range of capacities and configurations, making its solutions applicable across the full spectrum of data centre types - from large hyperscale campuses processing hundreds of megawatts of IT load, to smaller edge data centres located closer to end users. Edge facilities in particular often have limited space and strict energy constraints, where the compact footprint and high efficiency of Alfa Laval plate heat exchangers offer a particularly strong advantage. The same core technology scales effectively across both environments.

What sustainability benefits do Alfa Laval cooling solutions bring to data centre operators?

Data centres are under increasing regulatory and investor pressure to reduce their environmental impact. Alfa Laval’s cooling solutions contribute to sustainability in several ways: reducing overall energy consumption through higher thermal efficiency, enabling greater use of free cooling to cut mechanical refrigeration hours, facilitating waste heat recovery for reuse rather than atmospheric rejection, and supporting water-efficient cooling designs that reduce consumption in water-stressed regions. For operators working toward net zero targets or reporting under frameworks such as the EU Energy Efficiency Directive, these are tangible, measurable contributions - not marginal gains.