Using groundwater for cooling Moscow State University supercomputers (for example, the «Lomonosov» supercomputer)

Abstract

Aquifers may represent suitable storage systems for both heat and cold. An example of a supercomputer cooling system using groundwater has been successfully implemented at the Australian Science Center Pawsey. The authors tried to evaluate the possibilities of groundwater use for the cooling system of the “Lomonosov” supercomputer with a capacity of 2,8MW to meet its needs for efficient summer cooling due to the insufficiently stable performance of the available air-cooling systems. The article gives the results of the experiment on pumping the heated water into fractured limestone. Based on the experiment interpretation, the authors chose the model (double porosity) of heat transport and determined its parameters. The authors created a numerical-analytical program code for the interpretation of the field data of the experiment. They modeled several scenarios for the design of the cooling system. The simulation results showed that the continuous operation of the projected system using the limestone aquifer would provide the maximum need for cooling a 2,8 MW supercomputer within 10 years, while the required operation interval in the summer period is 1month.