Oxygen-deprivation systems showcased at CeBIT

No doubt there's a few outfits at CeBIT doing little aside from blowing hot air, but a number of firms are seeking to extract all the warm oxygen it can from critical data centers. Oxygen-deprivation systems have seen a lot of interest in Germany, as both Wagner Alarm and Security Systems GmbH's OxyReduct and N2telligence GmbH's not-yet-named system remove a vast majority of the surrounding oxygen from rooms full of servers in an effort to greatly reduce the risk of overheating and fire. Although each company's approach had its own special twist, reducing the oxygen level within notoriously toasty data centers is certainly something enterprises and even medium-sized businesses will take note of, as just about everyone and their great-grandparents are now terrified of components spontaneously combusting. Unfortunately, neither outfit was willing to disclose general pricing information, as they seem to work on a per-job basis based on the area that needs do-oxygenated, but if you're studio apartment looks anything like this, you should definitely look into a consumer edition if it ends up on the market.

[Richard Berkin @ Mar 20th 2007 8:00PM]

Isn't this what killed Godzilla in the original movie?

[waba waba @ Mar 20th 2007 8:01PM]

This is a joke right? A vacuum is the ultimate insulator. You know those nice thermoses you keep coffee in? They have an inner and outter shell, with a near vacuum in the middle. This keeps your stuff nice and toasty! Are these people crazy!?

[Adam Rosner @ Mar 20th 2007 9:19PM]

It's removal of Oxygen only, air is around 21% oxygen, the rest is Nitrogen and CO2. So, replace the Oxygen with something else - you have an environment that doesn't support fire (or life).

[LordJohnWhorfin @ Mar 20th 2007 8:07PM]

Please learn the proper use of "you're" and "you are". Thank you. That is all.

[G$ @ Mar 21st 2007 6:09PM]

Don't you mean:

Please learn the proper use of "your" and "you're". Thank you. That is all.

[LukeA @ Mar 20th 2007 8:16PM]

Removing the oxygen will remove some risk of fire, but not any risk of overheating.

[LukeA @ Mar 20th 2007 8:19PM]

Oh, and what happens when something malfunctions and a tech opens the door and goes in and there's something hot enough to ignite in regular atmosphere, but not in the oxygen-free one? What happens when the tech introduces oxygen to that?

[Karl @ Mar 20th 2007 8:19PM]

waba: I thought so, too. Whilst it's true that air is a bad conductor of heat, it can at least conduct. A vacuum has no particles to transfer energy, so conduction cannot happen. Neither can convection. The only method left is radiation, which is no good way of ridding yourself of heat.

My thermodynamics is a bit rusty, though. No doubt somebody has an explanation to this.

LordJohnWhorfin: There is a grammar problem, but it's between "your" and "you're", rather than "you're" and "you are".

Karl

[Error404 @ Mar 20th 2007 8:49PM]

Since when does removing oxygen = complete vacuum? Unless that's all there were to begin with... which would've set the whole place on fire spontaneously anyway.

[Dr Buzz0 @ Mar 20th 2007 8:58PM]

These types of systems have been around for a while. Not really scaled for IT, but they have been around in other industries where fire can be a hazard. It reduces the oxygen in the area but does not create a vacuum. Also, importantly, you wont die, because there is still enough oxygen to support human breathing. You might get fatigued if you spent some time there though. It won't prevent fires 100%, but makes it much harder for them to ignite and grow.

[Brian Laks @ Mar 20th 2007 9:28PM]

It might also help with the rat problems...

[Carl @ Mar 20th 2007 9:37PM]

These systems don't create a Vacuum they just replace the Oxygen with Nitrogen, so you still have the same cooling ability as normal air, but without the flammability.

[ryan @ Mar 20th 2007 10:58PM]

the excess oxygen could then be pumped into the office blocks, to make the employees more alert and productive. who cares if they combust...they're dispensable... muuuahhh hahahahahahaah

[Mikey B. @ Mar 20th 2007 11:11PM]

Makes sense to use N2 in an area prone to fire, but users have been providing fire protection via Halon for years, not such a bad way to go, since you have full time access to the area. With a N2 purge, you're IT gurus would have to wait for several hours for the O2 levels to return to >19.5% before going in the server room to change out a hard drive... not exactly a timely repair in a mission critical environment.

[Fire Doc @ Mar 20th 2007 11:13PM]

Fire triangle: fuel, oxygen, heat. Remove any one of the three to kill (or prevent) a fire. For typical fuels, you need about 15% oxygen (by volume) to support combustion. There are a number of fire suppression systems (some installed in mainframe rooms) that rely on this fact, discharging carbon dioxide, nitrogen, argon, or a combination of all three (e.g., Inergen) to reduce the oxygen concentration to the point that the fire is extinguished. The amount of gases to be discharged can be significant, though, given that you need to replace about 30% of the air in the room with the inert gas. And that ignores leakage, etc.

The systems described in this article are what we would call "inerting," as they are deployed before there is a fire in an effort to prevent ignition from occurring. It seems like an expensive way to go, because you could deploy VESDA- (Very Early Smoke Detection Apparatus) type detection systems that can detect smoking (and, in some cases, even just overheating) circuit boards, long before fire becomes a serious issue. Given that the conditions would have to be maintained as people enter and leave the room, introducing additional air, detection and suppression would probably be cheaper than maintenance of inerting. Plus, I'm not sure I'd want to work in a reduced-oxygen atmosphere, day-in and day-out.

The image seems to tell a slightly different story than the article; instead of protecting the entire space, it appears that the oxygen concentration may be reduced only within volume of the equipment. That would reduce the maintenance burden and would make the room a more pleasant place in which to work (relatively). Given that the equipment is what you want to protect, anyway, and is the most likely source of the fire (along with underfloor cabling, I suppose), perhaps this would be a nice balance.

[Fact9 @ Mar 21st 2007 3:50AM]

Won't removing the oxygen kill the sysadmins who are inside ?

[MarkG @ Mar 21st 2007 8:30AM]

If you lower the oxygen level to 14%, it prevents combustion, but will still allow humans to breathe. The effects one would feel at that oxygen level would be about the same as being at the top of a mountain.

[Trev @ Mar 21st 2007 10:09AM]

Also seems like a new twist on an old system like Halon (or it's replacements)