Liquid-Cooled High-Density Data Center Design, United Arab Emirates

In 2025 UBIK delivered the concept and schematic design of a data center of 7.6 MW of IT load for a public body in the United Arab Emirates. The facility integrates zones of very high density on direct-to-chip liquid cooling beside conventional air-cooled halls, with the electrical and thermal architectures designed as one hybrid system. The design covers every discipline. The client and the site are not named.

The facility

Liquid cooling changes the central plant and the electrical distribution of the facility. The chilled-water plant serves two loops at two temperatures: a warm loop to the coolant distribution units that feed the cold plates, and a conventional loop to the air-cooled halls and the residual heat the liquid does not capture. Heat rejection for the warm loop can run at temperatures a Gulf summer still allows, which is the efficiency case for the technology. That case holds only if the two loops, their buffer, their controls and their failure states are designed together. The electrical system follows the density: distribution to the liquid-cooled rows carries several times the current of a conventional row, and the resilience objective applies to the coolant as much as to the power.

Scope

• Design basis: the load profile by hall and zone, the liquid and air split, the resilience objective in Tier terms, the environmental envelope for each class of equipment and the climate design conditions.
• Concept and schematic design of the thermal system: central plant, the two chilled-water loops, coolant distribution units, the air-cooled halls, heat rejection sized for the site’s design hours.
• Concept and schematic design of the electrical system: utility intake, standby generation, UPS, distribution to conventional and liquid-cooled rows, with the maintenance and failure states drawn out.
• Fire protection, security, low-current and telecommunications coordination, and the technical spaces of the building.

What the work had to resolve

The failure states of a liquid-cooled row are faster than those of an air-cooled one: the thermal mass of a cold plate is small, and a loss of coolant flow is measured in seconds. The design treated coolant continuity as a Tier question, with redundant coolant distribution units, redundant pumping and a buffer sized for the transfer times of the power system, and it demonstrated the states on paper before the schematic design fixed them.

The Gulf climate sets the heat rejection design for both loops, and the design was checked at the hottest hour and at the part loads of the early phases, where the facility will spend its first years.

The design, the site and the client’s requirements are not published.