| Description: | When our old cooling machine gave up, we had to order a new one. ASTRON’s telescopes acquire lots of data, meaning we have a very busy server room that generates a lot of heat and needs to be cooled down. Although we reuse a lot of the heat from the server room through our thermal energy storage and heat pump, additional cooling is required every now and then.
Whereas our old cooling system had a global warming potential (GWP; the heat absorbed by a greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, so a lower number has a less negative impact) of 2,200, the new one has a GWP of 6. At the same time, the new system has more capacity than the old one, while taking up less space. |
