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With the cold-fog direct evaporative cooling (CDEC) technology, which uses the natural cooling sources, the cooling energy consumption of data centers can be reduced, and thus the cooling cost can be decreased significantly. There are only a few studies on the application of CDEC in data centers. In this paper, CDEC technology is proposed to provide cooling sources for a data center after cooling the high-temperature fresh air and circulated air from the data center. According to the results of experiments, it can be concluded that only when the relative humidity of high-temperature fresh air is lower than 40 %, the treated air meets the air supply requirements of the data center. otherwise, the circulated air need be treated by CDEC in order to ensure that the air temperature can be reduced to below 30 °C and the relative humidity be less than 80 %. Compared with general evaporative cooling, the efficiency can be improved by 2.07 %–28.50 % with CDEC. Besides, according to the orthogonal experiment, the sequence of various influencing factors on the CDEC is: air speed > spray flow rate > spray angle, which provides guidance for the optimization of application of CDEC in data centers. • Applying cold-fog direct evaporative cooling (CDEC) technology to data centers. • A cooling scheme for data center under a high-temperature climate is proposed. • FDEC can improve the utilization of natural cold sources in data centers. • FDEC is 2.07 %–28.5 % more efficient than general evaporative cooling. • This contributes to achieving free cooling for data centers throughout one year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temperature and humidity control in underground refuge chamber is an important issue in the case of power failure after a disaster. In this article, an ice storage air conditioner was newly developed for refuge chambers. A series of tests were conducted to investigate the ice storage, cooling, and dehumidification performance of the air conditioner. In addition, based on the orthogonal experimental principle, the effect of the key inlet air parameters such as speed, temperature and relative humidity on the cooling and dehumidification performance was analyzed in a systematic manner. Results show that: (i) the ice storage function could be completed by freezing the ice to below −15 °C within 60 h. After testing for 96 h, the outlet air temperature of the ice storage air conditioner is less than 23 °C; (ii) the effect of the inlet air parameters on the cooling and dehumidification performance could be found as velocity > temperature > relative humidity; (iii) the dehumidification efficiency of the ice storage air conditioner could decrease by 12.81%, while the cooling efficiency could decrease by 14.11% when the inlet air velocity increases from 5 m/s to 15 m/s. • An air conditioner combining ice storage and compressed air has been developed for refuge chamber. • The conditioner can meet the temperature control requirement of 15 people in a refuge chamber with an initial surrounding rock temperature of 30 °C. • The cooling and dehumidification performance of the conditioner is affected by velocity, temperature and relative humidity of inlet air in turn. • Suggestions for the practical engineering application of the air conditioner are given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]