Experimental study on the effects of gaseous contamination on it equipment

A significant amount of the energy produced in the United States of America is used by data centers for cooling purposes. The heat load of IT equipment is significantly increasing as computing power and electronic information increases. A greener and better solution is the implementation of air-side economizers. When the ambient conditions are suitable Air-side economizers bring in outside air into the data center to cool its servers.;A major problem occurs with the use of air side economizers namely contamination. IT equipment is mainly made of copper and silver metals. An experimental study was performed on silver and copper coupons exposing them to a mixture of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen in a controlled environment. As expected the coupons reacted with the gaseous contamination and formed corrosion products. The focus of this study is to experimentally determine the rate of corrosion.