Analysis of Cooling Technologies in the Data Center Sector on the Basis of Patent Applications

Abstract

The cooling of server components has been developed over the past few years in order to meet increasing cooling requirements. The growth in performance and power density increases the cooling demand. To gain a better understanding of the evolution and possible future technology developments in the field of data center cooling, a patent analysis method was used with a focus on the server and computer room levels. After the patent extraction from the European patent database for the period 2000–2023, the search results were classified and analyzed. Most of the patents deal with air or liquid cooling. Since 2015, a technological shift from air to liquid cooling can be identified on the level of patent activities. In conclusion, from the patent analysis, it can be derived that liquid cooling will continue to gain in importance in the future and could also be combined with other approaches in the form of hybrid cooling. However, air cooling may still be relevant, even if the main cooling load is handled by liquid-based approaches. At the same time, the optimization potential for air cooling seems to have been largely exploited in comparison to liquid cooling, as can be seen from the falling number of the patent applications.