At the AHR Expo, Honeywell announced the launch of a platform of liquid heat transfer agents that cool high-performance electronics. These new heat transfer agents lower operational costs for applications such as data centers that use high-performance servers.

Data centers currently use about three percent of the world’s electricity, and that number is expected to rise to eight percent by 2030, according to research by Global Markets Insights (GMI). With cooling systems accounting for approximately 40 percent of total energy consumption, the need for intelligent and energy-efficient solutions is expected to drive data center cooling market growth. In addition, the move to 5G is creating even more demand for cooling solutions.

“The density of the transistors in the chips is getting so small that these chips are generating a lot of heat,” said Chris LaPietra, vice president and general manager of Honeywell Stationary Refrigerants.

Glycol or a fan isn’t enough, LaPietra said. Even moving to colder climates isn’t enough. Solstice E-Cooling, the newest addition to Honeywell’s line of next-generation low-global-warming potential refrigerant technologies, uses a two-phase liquid cooling process to remove heat from electronic applications while reducing environmental impact.

The two-phase process allows for more energy-efficient and uniform cooling, better heat rejection, and reduced pumping power than single-phase liquid cooling, where fluid remains in its liquid form throughout the cooling process.

Solstice E-Cooling is also a dielectric solution, serving as an electrical insulator for equipment to prevent damage from contact with fluids.