Patent Application Number: 2008260481
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Facilitator's Comment 
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United States
The concept of cold aisle isolation is described in US Patent Application 2006/0260338 (filed May 17, 2005) ('Cold Aisle Isolation'). This document also describes the idea of using baffles, doors and roof sections to prevent warm air entering a cold aisle in a data centre. A 'baffle' is a device used to restrain the flow of a fluid, gas, or loose material.
The idea that cold air can be pumped into a data centre from ducts above the electronics racks (as opposed to pumping it in from a raised floor) is described in US Patent No 7,286,351 (filed 6 May 2005) ('Apparatus and Method for Facilitating Cooling of an Electronics Rack Employing a Closed Loop Heat Exchange System'). See figures 1B, 5A and 5B.
http://www.42u.com/cooling/in-row-cooling/in-row-cooling.htm
I cannot see from the URL whether this product was disclosed to the public before the priority date.
What do others think?
Cold aisle containment, of itself, would appear to be part of the prior art. The advantage of an overhead cooling module is that cold air is heavier than warm air and tends to fall with the force of gravity and thus removes the need to expend energy powering fans located in a raised floor.
The advantage of an enclosed cold aisle is that by removing the inefficiencies of cool air being heated by warm air, the system can focus on cooling the load instead of the entire room.
This patent application describes efficient cooling systems for rooms in which computer servers are stored.
Data centres are rooms filled with servers (computers that store large amounts of data). A server farm is a collection of servers. Servers are typically placed in racks in a data centre.
A room full of servers generates a lot of heat and that heat can affect the ability of the servers to function properly. Data centre rooms should be maintained at temperatures and humidity for the servers to operate reliably. In a data centre room, server racks are typically laid out in rows with alternating hot and cold aisles between them. Hot aisles are those into which the servers expel hot air and cold aisles are those that the servers take cold air from. All servers are installed into racks to achieve a front-to-back airflow pattern to draw in conditioned air from the aisles in front and expel hot air into the aisles behind them.
Most existing data centres involve a cooling system built into a raised floor within the data centre. The cost of building a raised floor is generally high and the cooling efficiency is generally low.
The invention comprises a room filled with servers ('server cooling room') that has an air conditioning unit on the roof ('cooling module') that pumps cool air into the server cooling room below. The cooling module cools the hot air by pushing it through cooling coils, which can contain cold water. The server cooling room is located inside a building (known as a 'data centre').
Cool air passes into the servers to cool them down and is then expelled as hot air from the servers and from the server cooling room. That hot air is then cooled by the cooling module and the process repeats.
In an embodiment, the server cooling room may have two modes of air flow depending on the outside temperature. In the first mode, the cooling module cools air sourced from outside the building. Where the air outside the building is too hot to be used for cooling, that air is prevented from entering the data centre and the second mode is used, whereby air that has been expelled from the server cooling room is cooled instead.