Air purifier/cleaner or air conditioner for server room?

[Revil]

Hi,

Does anyone use some kind of air cleaner/purifier?

I have open rack with servers in dedicated room in flat in UK. I keep the room clean but every time I open a server it’s full of dust. And I really dislike when sometime the dust is black – I guess it’s because I keep opened window during winter inversions.

I’m waiting for winter discounts for mobile air-conditioning units (I know it’s not power effective) since I cannot keep the room cold during summer. Does air-conditioner unit clean the air? If it does then I don’t need air purifier.

Thank you.

Kind regards,
Revil

 

[JSchuricht]

The portable Harrier unit I use in my server closet has a filter which is more like a small screen to catch large dust particles. It won't do anything to help with an open window.

 

[ecosse]

I use a portable air conditioner and I find the metal grills inside the unit catch a hell of a lot of dust as well as a couple of dust catching inserts. However, at least in my unit it is very hard to clean - only one of the sides comes off - which means that the effectiveness of the unit reduces. Furthermore, I still find there is dust....

 

[Churchill]

I bought a Luma and I couldn't be happier. Not only does it cool the room as a fan but it doubles as an AC unit without requiring a window hose

Luma Comfort || Evaporative Coolers

Mine, in either fan or AC mode, has a massive dust filter on the back and picks up quite a bit of dust, I clean it once a month. If the room gets hot, I pour some water in the AC portion and it cools the room down quite heavily.

 

[fractal]

Just a few random thoughts from stuff I have learned over the years.
1 - most air conditioners do have an air filter - but more often than not that air filter is there to protect the motor, not clean the air.
2 - evaporative coolers work fine where the ambient air is hot and dry and the target area can handle humidity.
3 - evaporative coolers are useless where it is humid, like the gulf coast of the US
4 - evaporative coolers are a poor choice where humidity can cause problems like in computer rooms, rooms with art / antiques or with people with health issues.
5 - air filters come in various sizes and styles to match your needs and can be independent of the air conditioner. They are often a good choice for small areas where portability and air quality is important.

So, yeah, you probably want an air cleaner for your flat, especially if you keep the window open and get a lot of soot. Multi stage cleaning may be appropriate with a thick, porous filter in the window it self to block the big junk and a room air cleaner to clean up the rest.

So, to your question ... Yes. I have air cleaners in the commonly populated rooms in my house. I would run a whole house air filter if that were an opportunity. But, it is expensive to install and maintain.

 

[larrysb]

A HEPA filtering unit can take out the dust and particulates in the room. Depends a bit on how much air is coming in from outside and where it comes from. There's usually gaps around floors and baseboards that draw in dust from crawlspaces and dead areas inside the wall.

If you want to keep it really clean, then slight positive pressure from a filtered source is the way to go.

For air conditioning (cooling) you're removing heat produced from the servers. Since virtually every watt that goes into a computer turns into heat, you can calculate the load by multiplying your watts of power consumption times 3.41 = BTU/hr. So if you have 4x servers burnning 1000watts each, the thermal load is 13640 BTU/hr. That's in addition to the thermal ingress from ambient heat, and your lights and whatever other equipment is in the room, switches, UPS, so on.

 

[Rand__]

Guys, this was a thread from 2017...

 

[larrysb]

Well, thermodynamics still exist.