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Serving as the information backbone of an increasingly digitalized world and energy-intensive, the data center industry has to seek low-carbon developing way to properly meet the rapidly rising service demand. This paper designs 45 kinds of configuration choices for each decision units by integrating three data centers, three cooling technologies, as well as five energy supply mixes. The model is formulated as a bi objective optimization problem for the decision maker to decide newly established data location and configuration with objective of reducing data center expansion costs and well as minimizing power utilization associated with carbon emissions from a country level. The pilot study in China under the scenarios of different carbon emissions limitation and propagation delay that China can reduce at least 25% of newly established data center related emissions from 2020 to 2023. It further shows that future expansion can be focus on Inner Mongolia and Ningxia for the north, Hubei for the middle, and Yunnan and Guangxi for the south. This paper provides a fresh perspective and makes a valuable attempt at the low-carbon development of data centers. • Carbon awareness based integrated optimization model for data center in China is proposed. • Layout, scale, cooling technology and power supply mix are simultaneously considered. • 25% of newly established data center electricity related emissions in China can be avoided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In data centers, a large number of IT sever racks with different heat dissipation rates are arranged in multiple rows, leading to much higher per-unit heat release and therefore more uneven temperature distribution than in general buildings. This paper chooses a small-scale data center located in China to analyze the thermal environment for the operation of these critical equipments. The wind speed and temperature in the data center were measured, and a corresponding computer room model was established via computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation software. Based on it, the characteristics of flow field and temperature field of the data center were analyzed. The optimization methods for problem of uneven temperature distribution and chaotic air supply in the data center were proposed and verified by evaluation index. Furthermore, the return temperature index(RHI) increased from 0.918 to 0.93, the return heat index(RTI) increased from 0.222 to 0.342. • The thermal environment of a small-scale data center in Wuhan, China was measured. • The data center model was established via numerical simulation software. • The optimized schemes for the thermal environment in the data center were proposed. • Optimization of data center can provide reference for construction and operation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]