Applications

Data Center & Mission Critical

Reject IT heat to the outdoors and capture free cooling — while keeping outside air, dust, and humidity out of the server environment.

Energy Recovery & Free Cooling for Data Centers & Mission-Critical Facilities

Precision Cooling for Mission-Critical Uptime.

Reject IT heat to the outdoors and capture free cooling — while keeping outside air, dust, and humidity out of the server environment.

Data centers are defined by two priorities: uptime and energy efficiency. Cooling is the largest non-IT energy use, so the single highest-impact efficiency strategy is free cooling (economization) — using favorable outdoor conditions to reject IT heat with little or no mechanical refrigeration.

But operators must protect the IT environment: servers run within defined temperature and humidity envelopes at the inlet, and bringing unconditioned outside air directly into the hall risks introducing dust, humidity swings, and gaseous contaminants. Air-to-air heat exchangers that keep the two airstreams physically separated — indirect air-side economizers — deliver the free-cooling benefit without that exposure. This is where Innergy Tech fits: our sensible plate exchangers and heat pipes transfer heat from the hot IT airstream to outdoor air with no mixing, and our full air-to-air portfolio also recovers energy on the facility’s ventilation and support spaces.

Explore Air-to-Air Solutions
SENSIBLE HEAT, UPTIME & CONTAMINATION CONTROL

Cool Relentless Heat, Efficiently, Without Risk

Enormous, Continuous Sensible Load IT equipment converts essentially all its power into heat, around the clock. The vast majority of a data center’s cooling load is the sensible heat from IT equipment. Rack densities have climbed dramatically with AI workloads. This is a sensible-cooling problem, which is why enthalpy (moisture) recovery — central to comfort-ventilation applications — is not the main lever here; free cooling of sensible heat is.

PUE Pressure Cooling is the biggest non-IT energy use, so operators relentlessly pursue lower PUE. Economization is the highest-impact strategy: economizers can save a large fraction of cooling energy, and air-side and pumped-refrigerant systems can approach full free-cooling operation with minimal mechanical input. Any recovery/economizer device is judged on how many free-cooling hours it unlocks at what fan/pump energy.

Uptime Is Non-Negotiable Cooling-related issues are a meaningful share of data-center outages, and a significant outage can carry serious financial cost. Reliability, redundancy, and low-maintenance design are paramount — favoring passive devices with few moving parts.

 

Contamination & Humidity Control The IT environment must stay within defined humidity limits and be protected from particulate and gaseous contamination. Direct outside-air economizers can introduce dust, humidity swings, and corrosive gases, requiring filtration and humidity management. Indirect approaches that keep the airstreams separated avoid this exposure by providing complete separation of outdoor and data center air to eliminate cross-contamination. Physical airstream separation is therefore a key selection factor — squarely Innergy Tech’s strength.

Water Scarcity Evaporative and water-side economizers use significant water, drawing increasing scrutiny. Water-free, air-to-air approaches — dry indirect economizers using plates or heat pipes — are attractive where water use is constrained.

THE INNERGY TECH SOLUTION: SEPARATED-AIRSTREAM HEAT TRANSFER

Air-to-Air Heat Transfer Without Mixing

Innergy Tech is a comprehensive air-to-air energy recovery manufacturer offering energy recovery wheels, sensible and enthalpy plate exchangers, and heat pipes. For data centers, the separated-airstream, sensible devices are most relevant:

  • Heat Pipes (Thermogain): Passive thermosiphon devices with no moving parts, no external power, and physically separated airstreams. Used as heat-pipe heat-exchanger free-cooling coils that transfer heat from the hot IT airstream to outdoor air without mixing. Their passivity and reliability suit mission-critical, low-maintenance operation. Confirm capacities/temperature limits for the duty.
  • Sensible Plate Exchangers: Fixed-plate, sensible-only recovery with separated airstreams and no moving parts — a core indirect air-side economizer technology, transferring IT heat to outdoor air with no cross-contamination. Well matched to the sensible-dominated data-center load.
  • Energy Recovery Wheels & Enthalpy Plates (I4, IPE6-PM): For the facility’s ventilation and support-area comfort air (offices, NOC), where latent recovery is useful. Generally not applied to the IT airstream, both because the load is sensible and because a wheel rotates between airstreams; reserve these for ventilation/support duty.

Water-Free Advantage

Dry, air-to-air indirect economization with plates or heat pipes uses no process water — an increasingly important advantage as data-center water use faces scrutiny.

Facility Types

Recovery Technology Fit

Benefits & Value Drivers

Free Cooling Without Contamination Air-to-air indirect economizers reject IT heat to outdoor air while keeping the airstreams physically separated — capturing free-cooling hours without introducing outside dust, humidity, or contaminants into the hall. Directly supports lower PUE.

Water-Free Heat Rejection Dry plate and heat-pipe indirect economizers use no process water — valuable as data-center water use faces growing scrutiny.

Passive Reliability for Uptime Heat pipes and plates have no moving parts (heat pipes need no external power), aligning with the reliability and low-maintenance demands of mission-critical operation, where cooling issues are a meaningful driver of outages.

Sensible-Matched Technology Data-center loads are overwhelmingly sensible; sensible plates and heat pipes are matched to that load, while enthalpy devices serve the ventilation/support air.

Extends the Allowable Envelope Advantage Wider allowable temperature and humidity classes increase free-cooling hours; efficient air-to-air heat exchangers help capture them.

 

Certified Performance Innergy tech states its products are AHRI-certified and provides certified performance data through Winnergy Pro, supporting PUE modeling and design documentation.

Designing Free Cooling for a Data Center?

Our team can help apply air-to-air, separated-airstream heat exchangers to your indirect economizer and ventilation systems, with AHRI-certified performance data for your PUE analysis.

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