Enhancing data center cooling efficiency and ability: A comprehensive review of direct liquid cooling technologies.

As data centers increasingly become the backbone of the digital age, managing their substantial energy consumption and mitigating heat generation are paramount. This paper focuses on direct liquid cooling as a transformative technology for enhancing energy efficiency and operational safety in high-density computing environments. Significant advancements and persisting challenges in this field have been identified by analyzing various direct liquid cooling methodologies including immersion, spray/jet, and microchannel cooling. Comparative analysis of these systems reveals their potential to substantially lower thermal resistances and improve energy utilization. Despite these advancements, the research highlights persistent challenges such as integration complexities and scalability issues. Recommendations for future research directions to improve the efficiency and ability of direct liquid cooling applications in data centers were concluded, emphasizing the need for user-friendly and cost-effective solutions, comprehensive guidelines for cooling method selection, and hybrid cooling systems. It also recommends advanced energy management strategies such as real-time power adjustment that dynamically matches energy supply with computational demand to optimize efficiency. These contributions underscore the importance of advancing data center cooling technologies to meet future demands. • A comprehensive review of data center direct liquid cooling advances. • The ranges of heat flux, PUE, and cost are compared for different technologies. • Comprehensive guidelines for cooling method selection are presented. • The main limitation of direct liquid cooling systems lies in complex integration. • Coupling direct liquid cooling with tactics like waste heat recovery is promising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]