Morgan Tatchell-Evans

Project Title: Improving Legacy Data Centre Cooling Efficiency Through Computational Fluid Dynamics

Background

I graduated from the University of Leeds in 2012 with a BEng in Mechanical Engineering and joined the DTC the same year.  I have a long standing interest in energy use and the climate, and saw in the DTC a way to gain a holistic understanding of these issues, to add to the technical grounding gained in my degree course.

Research Interests

My PhD project is focused on the energy used in cooling data centres.  Data centres use around 3% of the electricity generated in the UK, with this figure growing rapidly.  Much of this electricity is used in cooling the IT equipment.  There is currently a large gulf between the efficiency of cooling in the best modern data centres and in a majority of legacy facilities.  The focus of my work is to use computational fluid dynamics to identify and enable the adoption of best practice in air handling in data centres.

My work will also investigate:

• the barriers to adoption of efficient cooling practices
• what metrics may be useful in assessing the efficiency of a data centre, or in encouraging efficiency improvements
• what role pressure groups could play in encouraging efficiency improvements