Life cycle assessment of a climate-friendly data center cooling device

Abstract

The main aim of this study is to evaluate the manufacturing process's carbon footprint, water footprint, and environmental impacts for a newly designed cooling device in a data center. The results were compared for the different conditions of the manufacturing process: Use of wind electricity, use of solar electricity, use of electricity from the interconnected system, different waste amounts, and different forklifts. According to the characterization results with the Recipe (2016) method, wind electricity has less environmental impact in most of the analyzed categories except mineral resource scarcity. The scenarios with waste management offer the best environmental results for mineral resource scarcity. Normalization results define human health effects as the dominating category in which wind electricity use provides the best environmental results.Based on the IPCC 2013 GWP 100a results, the carbon footprint values for the scenarios varied between 39565,135–40071,702 CO2 eq. The base scenario has the highest carbon footprint. Based on the Water Scarcity method, the water footprint varied between 40,0570–43,1801 m3. The scenarios with the highest water footprint are the base scenario and the scenarios where forklift replacement is made. The lowest water footprint values were achieved with the use of wind electricity. It has been determined that replacing a forklift does not contribute much to reducing carbon footprint, water footprint, or other environmental impacts. On the contrary, using renewable electricity and waste reduction significantly contribute to reducing the environmental effects. This study shows the importance of renewable electricity use and waste management for a newly designed device manufacturer. Therefore, a life cycle assessment study is beneficial for choosing the manufacturing path for a newly developed device.