Particulate matter pollution is one of the major causes of equipment failure within data centers. Keeping particulate matter pollution in data centers at low levels can reduce equipment failure rates while also cutting down operating costs.
In order to control particulate matter pollution, data center managers need to use real-time environmental monitoring tools to monitor the indoor environment. By utilizing real-time environmental monitoring tools, data center managers can accurately assess indoor cleanliness to determine if corrective actions are needed to be taken to ensure a clean and regulated environment.
ASHRAE, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, has published guidelines to help data center managers quantify if the data center has acceptable indoor air quality levels. The guidelines recommend that the particulate matter content in data centers should adhere to ISO 14644-1 Class 8 cleanliness, which is also included in the site planning guidelines for large data storage centers:
Contains no more than 3,520,000 particles greater than or equal to 0.5 μm per cubic meter.
Contains no more than 832,000 particles greater than or equal to 1 μm per cubic meter.
Contains no more than 29,300 particles greater than or equal to 5 μm per cubic meter.
To achieve ISO Class 8 cleanliness, data centers should take several measures, including:
Implementing a comprehensive air filtration system to remove airborne particulate matter from the environment.
Regularly cleaning the data center to remove accumulated dust and debris.
Real-time and continuous monitoring of particulate matter pollution levels and maintaining them within specified limits.
To help data centers continuously monitor indoor particulate matter, and offer assistance to indicate air filtration systems to remove particulate matter from the environment, Cubic Control has offered a possible solution with innovative particulate matter measurement technology.
As a leading manufacturer of high-tech smart gas sensors and analyzers, in the basis of application requirements and challenges, Cubic has innovatively developed a superior and reliable online optical particle counter, OPC-6510DS, which could be applied for cleanroom environmental monitoring in the data center.
Cubic optical particle counter OPC-6510DS is developed based on Laser Scattering technology and could realize accurate detection of particles with various sizes in a unit volume of air. With built-in unique Laser particle counter module, consistent RPM fan, and well-designed ultrasonic flow sensor, OPC-6510DS provides a stable and high flow rate of 28.3L/min gas sampling rate which enable it compliant to ISO 14644-1 requirement. Cubic OPC-6510DS can simultaneously output the particle number of 5 channels of >0.3μm, >0.5μm, >1.0μm, >5.0μm, >10μm in pcs/28.3L or pcs/m³and supports 24/7 operation to ensure stable and continuous particle monitoring.
In addition to the core performance and features, a touch screen is developed for OPC-6510DS to display continuous monitoring data and cleanroom levels in real-time. Audible and visual alarm function is also designed as on-site timely warning.
Moreover, Cubic OPC-6510DS could achieve online transmission of monitoring data based on RS485 ModBus and MOTT communication, which can be further integrated into filtration system to maintain the particle counts concentration in the cleanroom environment within a certain low concentration range required by the ISO 14644-1 standard.