What harm will smog invading the computer room cause? How to protect against it

I believe that everyone is familiar with the concept of smog. The harm of air pollution to people can be imagined. It can cause a variety of respiratory diseases and have a huge impact on people's work and life. Similarly, air pollution also has a serious impact on data centers, especially on electronic equipment running in data centers. Data centers are not only a source of air pollution, but the data centers themselves are also affected by air pollution. If the equipment in the computer room is operated for a long time in an environment with excessive dust concentration and corrosive gas concentration, it will not only greatly reduce the service life of the cabinet, but more seriously cause major downtime accidents. The following article will tell you what harm smog does to the computer room and how to prevent air pollution in the data center computer room.

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Wide areas of the country are shrouded in persistent smog, blocking out the dazzling sunlight. According to an environmental test report from Intel, China's air is so corrosive that circuit boards in data centers in this environment show signs of contamination and corrosion. The corrosion of this system exceeds expectations and has reached industrial pollution levels, which seems to be unacceptable in a closed data center. Smog is caused by the increase in dust, sulfuric acid, organic hydrocarbons and other particles in the air, which makes the atmosphere turbid and mixed with fog.

These dust, powdered metal and other particles often evade the data center's filtering devices and reach the surface of the data center's cooling equipment and circuit system. Even on non-hazy days, many data centers will have a lot of dust and dirt accumulated in the gaps between fans, porous floor tiles, cables, and equipment cabinets. Dust with static electricity can damage servers, networks, or storage devices. 250V of static electricity can cause data loss, equipment restarts, and damage to microcircuits. Unsealed or improperly sealed floors, exposed walls, and printers can bring dust, causing downtime and fire risks. Once tiny floating particles enter the data center, they will cover various electronic components, reducing the heat dissipation performance of the computer room. In addition, the corrosive substances in them will reduce the insulation resistance between cables, or even short circuit, which will have a very large impact on the ports and chassis of the patch panel.

The impact of suspended particles on equipment in the computer room. The suspended particles in the air environment of the computer room are solid particles and liquid particles with a size range of 0.1μm~1000μm. They have the characteristics of strong adsorption. Once they enter the surface of the cabinet server, they will adhere for a long time, seriously affecting the heat dissipation of the server, affecting the conductivity of the circuit board, causing short circuits, and in the case of high humidity, they will corrode the circuit board and cause serious communication failures.

The impact of corrosive gases on data center computer room equipment. Corrosive gases mainly include hydrogen sulfide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and other gases. These gases will corrode the circuit boards of the equipment. If they exist in the computer room environment for a long time at a certain concentration, the circuit boards will be short-circuited or fail, causing equipment failures and leading to safety accidents.

Air Dust Failures caused by dust include:

• Mechanical influences: These include obstruction of cooling airflow, *moving parts, wear, optical interference, interconnects*, surface deformation (e.g., magnetic media), and other similar influences;
• Chemical influence: Dust falling on printed circuit boards can cause component corrosion and/or short circuits between adjacent functional components;
• Electrical effects: These effects include impedance changes and bridging of conductors in electronic circuits.

1. The harm of haze to data centers

1. Reduce the insulation performance of the circuits and components in the computer room

As the electrical components of IT equipment in computer rooms become more and more similar, they are more and more sensitive to air pollution. If the room is not well sealed, dust that falls on the equipment or is adsorbed on the human body will enter the network equipment through the airflow exchange in the data center. These metal ions combined with humid air will reduce the insulation performance of circuits and components.

2. Corrosion of circuit boards, shortening of equipment life

After the tiny particles in the haze absorb moisture in the air, they form an electrolytic layer on the surface of the equipment contaminated by the tiny particles, which will corrode many metals. If the electrolyte penetrates into the protective layer of the wire to form a corrosion point, and the conductor at the location of the corrosion point has a different voltage, an arc may be generated between the wires, and such an arc usually burns out components.

3. Dust screen is blocked, affecting the heat dissipation efficiency of IT equipment

The dust carried in the haze enters the network equipment through the exchange of air flow inside the computer room. The accumulated dust will cause the dust screen of the IT equipment in the computer room to be blocked, resulting in poor performance of the radiator, a sharp rise in the temperature of high-power devices, and faster rotation of the equipment fans, which will affect the heat dissipation effect, causing the temperature of local components to rise, and even cause IT equipment to shut down or be damaged due to overheating.

2. How to prevent air pollution in data center rooms

Air pollution has such a serious impact on data centers that we need to keep the API index in the data center good. For example, we can avoid building data centers near the sea (no more than 10 kilometers away from the sea), near chemical plants, noisy big cities, and heavily polluted areas, etc. This can improve the air quality of the data center; the floor, walls, and ceilings in the data center should use dust-proof materials to reduce the pollutant particles in the data center; the air inlet of the data center room should face away from the pollution source; the air quality of the data center should be checked and measured regularly; the operation of the air conditioning system should be checked regularly, the dust screen should be cleaned, and the data center should be cleaned regularly to keep the air inside clean.

Air pollution has a huge impact on data centers, which will directly determine the service life of electronic equipment in data centers. A good operating environment can extend the life cycle of electronic equipment and save a lot of equipment operation and maintenance costs for data centers. While people are generally concerned about air pollution, they should also focus on data centers. As information processing systems that carry many important applications, once a failure occurs, it will inevitably affect people's work and life.

1. Data Center Site Selection

The location of a data center is one of the most critical factors affecting the air quality of a computer room. Studies have shown that the dust concentration in urban industrial areas is much higher than that in urban areas and suburbs, and the air pollution in rural areas is one order of magnitude lower than that in cities. The specific comparison is shown in the following table. Therefore, when selecting a data center site, it should be located far away from railways, docks, airports, chemical plants and other areas that emit a lot of dust and toxic and harmful gases. There are detailed and clear requirements for the distance between computer rooms of different levels and these areas.

2. Positive pressure control in the equipment room

In order to prevent untreated air from outside the computer room from infiltrating into the computer room and to ensure the indoor air condition and cleanliness, it is necessary to ensure that the computer room is in a certain positive pressure state, that is, the air pressure in the computer room is kept higher than the air pressure in the adjacent area. According to experiments, when the indoor positive pressure value is 5Pa, there is a risk of outdoor air leaking into the room, and when the indoor and outdoor pressure difference is greater than 50Pa, the door opening and closing will be affected. Therefore, it is recommended that the minimum indoor and outdoor pressure difference should be 10Pa, not greater than 30Pa.

3. Indoor precision air conditioning set filter

The computer room is a relatively closed environment. The entry and exit of personnel, the handling and operation of equipment will generate pollutant particles, and the indoor circulating air will be polluted. Therefore, setting a certain level of filter in the precision air conditioner is an important way to ensure air quality. Filtering out polluted particles during the air circulation process is a common method to ensure indoor cleanliness. The requirements for the filter need to be considered together with the requirements for fresh air filtration to achieve the best effect.

4. Improve ventilation

Ventilation is the most effective control measure for dust removal, deodorization and air purification in the computer room. According to the requirements of the computer room for air humidity and fresh air volume, a fresh air unit is equipped to process the outdoor fresh air through the filter to the air state point that responds to the needs of the computer room, and then send it into the room. In China, the selection of fresh air fan filters often uses G4-level coarse-effect filters in combination with F7-level medium-efficiency filters, and most areas can ensure good fresh air quality. In areas where there is a risk of corrosive gases such as sulfides in the outdoor air, chemical filtration sections should be used to reduce the concentration of pollutants in the fresh air. The filter material should be adapted to the types and concentrations of pollutants in the outdoor air, and avoid secondary pollution; for areas with severe wind and sand, it is advisable to consider using air filters dedicated to sand and dust as the first-level filtration of the fresh air inlet.

5. Three-step approach

Although preventive measures such as shoe covers and protective clothing can prevent dust from being brought into the data center to a certain extent, the problem of air pollution does not seem to be that simple. It is precisely because of its pervasive nature that smog is both hateful and terrible. However, by following the following three steps, we can still minimize the damage caused by smog to the data center:

• We should close the doors and windows of the computer room, clean the air conditioning filter, and try to avoid contact with the outside world to form a closed space, eliminate the source of dust, and keep the air in the computer room clean. Control the entry and exit of personnel to avoid artificial entry or unnecessary pollution.
• The humidity of the computer room environment should be maintained to avoid being too dry. Especially in winter, dry air will not only generate static electricity that affects the lines, but also generate dust. Therefore, appropriate humidity can be beneficial to the maintenance of the data center computer room, but at the same time, excessive air humidity should be avoided to cause equipment corrosion and short circuit.
• Of course, dust prevention measures should be taken in advance. Not only the staff need to take dust prevention measures, but also some equipment in the data center, such as the ports of the patch panel, need to be equipped with fully sealed dustproof doors. Many manufacturers have begun to pay attention to these aspects. With the continuous development of data centers, the sealing of equipment ports has also become the focus of relevant manufacturers.

3. Summary:

People’s work and life have long been inseparable from data centers, and a clean and hygienic environment is of great significance to data centers.