A review on data centre cooling system using heat pipe technology

Heat pipe, a high efficient, cost effective and reliable device, is considered one of the most promising passive technologies for cooling data centres. Aiming to provide comprehensive information and focused perspective on heat pipe system for cooling data centres, the literature reviewed in this review is obtained from the Web of Science by searching the topic “heat pipe” and “data centre” conducted on Sep. 1, 2019 for the decade from 2009 to 2018. In this paper, a comprehensive review on heat pipes for use in data centre cooling systems will be carried out, starting from the working principle, heat transfer analysis and applications. The review works will be analysed in terms of the system research methodology, energy performance evaluation, and IT tasks. From the system research methodology, the heat pipe structure, simulation and testing analyses were conducted. From the energy performance evaluation, the energy consumption, energy recovery and energy saving analyses were studied. From the IT tasks, the avoidance of hot spots and thermal management in the data centres were analysed. The opportunities for further works are revealed including: developing new and efficient data centre cooling systems employing advanced technology; optimising the heat pipe structure for the data centre cooling systems; testing the data centre cooling systems under actual conditions; and evaluating the economic feasibility and market potential of the data centre cooling systems. This review provides the guidelines for the development of data centre cooling system based on the heat pipe.