Data Centers Breathe Easier With Less Oxygen 392
PC World is reporting that some companies are looking at a new method of fire protection in their server closets, oxygen-deprivation systems.""Wood stops burning when the oxygen content falls to 17 percent and plastic cables between 16 to 17 percent, said Frank Eickhorn, product manager for fire detection at Wagner Alarm and Security Systems GmbH in Hanover, Germany. Wagner makes electric compressors that use a special membrane to remove some of the oxygen from the outside air, a system the company calls OxyReduct. The excess oxygen is exhausted, and the remaining nitrogen-rich air is pumped inside the data center."
That's pretty hot (Score:5, Funny)
IT workers first day (Score:5, Funny)
- Here is your cube
- Here is your chair
- Here is your scuba gear
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Boss in a Gingham dress (Score:5, Funny)
Boss (on telephone to sysadmin in data centre): "I'm sorry Dave, but your recent conduct just hasn't been acceptable. I've decided to invoke the disciplinary procedure, and having discussed this with Mr. Flibble we've decided that this warrants 2 hours of W.O.O."
Sysadmin: "What's W.O.O.?"
Boss: "With
Boss as HAL 9000 (Score:5, Funny)
Hal: I'm afraid I can't do that Dave.
Re: (Score:2)
Not limited to low-oxygen... (Score:5, Funny)
But it can't hold a candle to the burning excitement of watching pasty-faced geeks burn out, run out of steam, and pass out in a low-oxygen environment.
Watch an out-o'-shape pasty-tubby try to ride a bicycle some time: with all his belabored breathing, one would think he was climbing Everest instead of pedaling on level ground.
I, of course, am in perfect shape, with nary an ounce of extraneous tissue to be seen...
*looks around furtively*
*runs away*
*collapses after 30 yards*
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No worries! I probably would collapse after 30 yards.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The body does not need carbohydrates. Your body can run fine on ketones. In fact, the brain operates more efficiently on ketones than on glucose.
People have been living on this diet for a lot longer than it's been sold as a weight loss plan. People with certain types of seizures which cannot occur unless brain glucose is over a certain level live on it all their lives as a means of controlling seizures.
In addition, and this is one of
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
They had a fancy nitrogen based system to put out fires, and it was tripped by accident, almost doing for a few of their technical bods.
Re:They won't pass out- they'll die. (Score:5, Informative)
From TFA:
They are not talking about oxygen free rooms. Yes, as your article says, breathing pure nitrogen will kill you as humans don't run on nitrogen. But that does not mean a high nitrogen content would be dangerous. Otherwise you would die as soon as you breathed a breath of Earth's air which is, by a long measure, mostly nitrogen. So your article really has nothing to do with this subject. Its sort of like giving a story of how 900 degree temperatures inside a cremation furnace affect the human body and using that as an argument on why people shouldn't be allowed in houses with the heat turned on.
Re:They won't pass out- they'll die. (Score:4, Insightful)
I *realize* they aren't talking about O2 free rooms. Perhaps I should have picked a better article closer to nitrogen asphyxiation then one advocating it's use for the death penalty. My bad.
I was *trying* to point out that you don't want to get too carried away by 'inerting' areas because there are consequences- while you may become sleepy and tired from CO poisoning, or disoriented, hot, and suffocating from CO2 poisoning, people will not experience warning symptoms with N2 poisoning- they'll simply keel over. That's it- zip, nada- I'm all for fire-safing server rooms (GO HALON!). No motive to discredit this technology- and no interest IN discrediting it. Just simple information that your average person might not have known about...
And you'll get into trouble with the N2/O2 becomes about 95%- there's not enough O2 partial pressure (Depending on your lung capacity and general health) without the addition of helium- that N2 has to dissolve somewhere, too...
Re:They won't pass out- they'll die. (Score:5, Informative)
"I was *trying* to point out that you don't want to get too carried away by 'inerting' areas because there are consequences- while you may become sleepy and tired from CO poisoning, or disoriented, hot, and suffocating from CO2 poisoning, people will not experience warning symptoms with N2 poisoning- they'll simply keel over."
You will only get the "simply keel over" effect if oxygen levels are 0 (or close to it), like if you suck on a hose spouting pure nitrogen. The same thing will happen if you start breathing pure CO2. If you are in an environment where your body cannot get the oxygen it needs, you will simply die. If on the other hand you get a more gradual fall in oxygen levels (which would be the most common failure scenario here, as well as in most everyday situations where CO2 levels rise), you will feel side effects first. And anyways, as long as you have reasonable safety precautions, its still not going to rise to the level of "They'd better make damn sure NO ONE can defeat the safeties to get into that room", like you said in your first post. I mean if you are going to keep people out of any enclosure where there may be a drop in oxygen levels, you would also have to keep them out of houses and apartments that are heated with natural gas (which may result in a methane leak).
"Just simple information that your average person might not have known about..."
I'm pretty sure the average person knows you need oxygen to breathe.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
To quote http://www.csb.gov/safety_publications/docs/SB-Nit rogen-6-11-03.pdf [csb.gov]
"Breathing an oxygen deficient atmosphere can have serious and immediate effects, including unconsciousness after only one or two breaths."
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Please read a physiology textbook. (Score:3, Insightful)
Not really. It takes about 20 seconds for blood from the lungs to reach the brain. If the blood is desaturated, you'll pretty much pass out instantly when this happens.
N2 is inert. It is not poison. The worst it will do is displace oxygen, giving about the same effect as holding your breath.
No. No. No. It's absofrigginlutely not the same. If you hold your breath, the blood can still take up oxygen from the air in your lungs, and the partial pressure o
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Does the BOFH know about this? (Score:5, Funny)
"Hostage" (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Mechanical Halon? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
This whole idea doesn't seem that great. So what if something shorts out and sits there glowing red and no one notices? You sure as hell notice when something starts burning but something could be slowing frying multiple components before anyone notices because there woul
It would still smoulder and smoke (Score:5, Insightful)
You are not supposed to be working all the time in the serverroom anyway, it's much too noisy in there and your 200Watt of heat production would be much better used to warm your office.
In other words: you would have noticed that fire too late anyway if you had to rely on the amount of smoke coming from it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Halon systems eliminate basically all oxygen.
These systems just reduce the amount of oxygen for the same effect.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course you're working off the assumption the people in IT are human....
Re:Mechanical Halon? (Score:5, Informative)
Halons work to extinguish fire using several mechanisms. Oxygen displacement- not absorption or binding- is one of them, but if this were the only factor, then dry nitrogen, carbon dioxide, or other inert gas would work just as well.
There are four things required for combustion: oxidizer, fuel, heat, and a chemical reaction that is self-sustaining- the "chain reaction," in which free radicals are formed. Halons work by kicking off chlorine, bromine, or fluorine radicals in the heat of the fire, ending these reactions. Unfortunately, the same properties that make this class of compounds so wonderful for extinguishing fires is also what makes them so good at terminating the production of ozone.
I also seem to recall something in my distant past as a fire instructor that halons as a group have a fairly high specific heat, meaning they carry away more heat from the fire; this is a relatively minor factor when compared to things like water which have high specific heat and very high heat of vaporization. Water is surprisingly good at putting out electrical fires; energized systems can be handled by using distilled water, as was done at Browns Ferry nuclear power plant in Tennessee in 1975. But it's messy and doesn't fight "three dimensional" fires very well.
Replacements such as FM-200 and Novec 1230 that do not survive long enough to reach the stratosphere have been made and are now available. They are comparable in effectiveness to more traditional halons (Halon 1211 and 1301), and Novec is shipped as a liquid rather than a compressed gas. This makes it safer and less expensive to transport. Being fluorinated molecules (no chlorine, just fluorine) less phosgene is produced during a fire, which is a good thing.
Re: (Score:2)
I am pretty sure that is incorrect.
I worked with a fire-suppression engineer who claimed to have personally experienced hundreds of halon discharges with little ill effect (he did seem like he might have had too much of the wacky-weed though). According to him, under normal deployment conditions, a halon system will not remove ALL oxygen, just enough to suppress most fires.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In a place I worked the computer room had a halon system. One day at shift change one of the operators caught a backpack strap on the mushroom button (even under the plastic mollyguard).. tore the button right off.
His first mistake was trying to put the button back.... whooosh!
halon stinks hours later.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As has already been stated, Halon worked as a fire suppressant by displacing oxygen, thus disrupting the fire triangle (fuel, oxygen, heat). Also, in the presence of any remaining flame or smoldering debris, Halon oxidized into other toxic gasses including phosgene which is very, very bad stuff
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I worked in a USAF sim that had halon under the floors, but no chilled air flow under the floors, and the floor tiles had no vents. One day the fire alarm tech accidentally triggered the halon, and the air pressure under the floor tiles lifted the tiles up and off of their frames. And it blew all the under floor dust up into the room. I think it was $10K to replace the two tanks (1988). The programmer in the room at the time said it sounds more like a bomb than a hiss.
This incident occurred the day afte
Safe to work (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Safe to work (Score:5, Informative)
RTFA, the oxygen content in the air would be the same as living at around 2000-3000m which people certainly do without ill effects.
Re:Safe to work (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, those people who live at 2000-3000m use fire for staying warm at night and for cooking. Kinda makes the entire premise seem a tad like... Oh, I dunno, complete and utter BS?
That said, I've often wondered why we don't do/keep almost all dangerously flammable tasks/equipment in near-zero-oxygen environments. Seems like a bit of a no-brainer for situations requir
Re:Safe to work (Score:4, Interesting)
Fires, however, do not have gas-exchange membranes like your lungs, making the partial pressure less important, and the concentration more so. 8% oxygen at two bars is less supportive of fires than 100% oxygen at
Re:Safe to work (Score:5, Informative)
There's a difference between pressure and partial pressure of oxygen. Reduced PP inhibits fire and FEELS TO HUMANS like being at altitude. Fire burns at altitude because the PP of o2 is the same. Humans feel like the PP is reduced because there's just fewer oxygen molecules (along with fewer of everything else).
My wife has COPD. She has an oxygen concentrator (really, it's just a nitrogen separator. It removes a large chunk of the nitrogen from room air and sends the rest of it down a tube to her nose). We have to post warnings in the windows and the like because the increased oxygen saturation near her when she's using her concentrator makes things that aren't usually flammable quite a bit more so - the exact opposite of the concept described in TFA. An ordinary bic lighter can become quite a sight when you aim the output from the concentrator at it (don't try this at home, kids).
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Fire burns at altitude because the PP of o2 is the same.
Huh? ppO2 is *not* the same at high altitudes. At 0.7 atm (~10,000 feet above sea level), pp02 is 0.7*0.21 = .14 as compared to 0.21 at sea level.
And, in fact, fires do not burn as well at high altitude. As someone who does a lot of camping above 10,000 feet I can tell you that fires are much harder to start and require much more air flow than they do at lower elevations. Boy Scouts are taught to use a "log cabin" structure for a campfire at high altitude, rather than the "tepee" structure that work
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
But, that must be making some assumption about the actual elevation of the datacenter. If the datacenter really is at 6000 ft. (it would be close to that, for example, in Denver, CO), then what is the effect of the reduced O2 concentration? At what point do you have to pressurize your datacenter to make the reduced O2 concentration safe?
Perfectly safe. (Score:3, Funny)
The benefits of CO2 (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Not that it's funny, but come on moderators, lame or not, it's still a joke! Lighten up!
Great idea! (Score:2)
I'm such a morbid bastard at times
Oh great! (Score:4, Funny)
Paging Mr. Travaglia! (Score:2)
Datacenter / ski resort (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Datacenter / ski resort (Score:5, Informative)
Breaking news: (Score:4, Funny)
Things they dont advertise (Score:2)
Not only does it stop fires, but it gets rid of your stupid employees!
Time for carbon monooxide detectors (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Time for carbon monooxide detectors (Score:4, Informative)
Like, say, someone opening the server-room door.
That won't cause a sudden oxygen feed. The pressures in the two rooms would be the same, just a different oxygen percentage.
There would be a slow diffusion oxygen in.
Michael
The Ideal data center would be filled with Helium. (Score:2)
No fires to worry about and it is a great conductor of heat.
Poisonous exhaust (Score:3, Insightful)
What fun (Score:5, Funny)
Not only are server rooms windowless, freakishly cold, and with uncomfortable chairs, but now they asphyxiate you too.
Re:What fun (Score:4, Funny)
Heck, I count myself lucky if I can sit on a stepstool, and twist my body 45-degrees to reach keyboard tray propped on the server 18 inches above my shoulders
I don't want oxygen, but I do want one of your fancy, schmancy chairs. I bet it even has a back!
Easy solution (Score:5, Funny)
Great (Score:4, Funny)
The guys in HR already call me "space man."
How much power does it use? (Score:2)
This was great for non-smokers on a submarine. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This was great for non-smokers on a submarine. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No kidding! Can you imagine the kind of power it'd take to drive the air scrubbers for something like that? You'd have to plug them directly into a nuclear powerplant or something.
The reasons they'd allow smoking in that environment are that 1) in the scheme of things, the extra cleaning capacity needed to get the smoke out of the air is trivial, and 2) submarines are not exactly conducive
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, but that fact is not relevant here. See many other postings regarding that in this story. Having a partial pressure of oxygen "equivalent to 10,000 feet" but with a "normal" atmospheric pressure, translates to an oxygen percentage of about 15%. The total atmospheric pressure at 10K ft. is 10.1 psi. Normal air at that altitude is still 21%, so things burn normally as you irrelevantly pointed out. Big whoop. Some people (especially young Navy kids) can function quit
Excellent, until somone opens the cabinet door.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Just make sure your buddy system works. It will be great fun communicating with hand signals.
I wonder if I would be allowed to wear flippers and my spear gun?
Re:But... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:But... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:But... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Still, I've been out of breath plenty in datacenters after pulling long lengths of (heavy) SCSI cables. I can't imagine trying to do that in an O2 Poor environment.
Re:But... (Score:5, Insightful)
AFAIK, the percentage of oxygen is no different at altitude than at sea level, it is just the pressure of atmosphere is lower. So if I had to wager a guess, I would say that combustion is dependant on concentration of O2 per mass, and respiration is dependant on concentration of O2 per volume, which is why a smaller percentage of O2 has a greater effect on combustion then on respiration.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:But... (Score:5, Informative)
Nope, it's the percentage of oxygen and the pressure. Multiplying pressure by percentage for each gas gives you the "partial pressure" of that gas, and it's the gradient of partial pressures that determines rate of absorption. Well, to be precise, gas in your tissues (lung tissues, blood, etc.) has "tension", not pressure, so it's the difference between the partial pressure of the gas in what you breathe and the partial tension of the same gas in your tissues that determines absorption rate.
To live, you need a ppO2 within a certain range. IIRC, between about 0.05 (5% at 1 atm, or 10% at 0.5 atm, etc.) and 2.4 (pure O2 at 2.4 atm, or 50% at 4.8 atm, etc.). Below that range, oxygen doesn't diffuse into your tissues fast enough to supply their needs, above that range the oxygen begins to damage the tissues, in an effect known as oxygen toxicity.
SCUBA divers who go to great depths take bottles with very low percentages of oxygen, low enough that the gas would be marginal for survival at the surface. They do it because at, say, 20 atm (600 feet), normal air has a ppO2 of about 4.2, far, far above the safe level. A 3% O2 mix at 20 atm, however has a comfortable ppO2 of 0.6. Since the deep mixes aren't breathable in shallow water, such divers either carry multiple bottles of different gas mixtures (don't mix 'em up!) or else have pre-positioned staged for appropriate depths.
Going the other direction, pilots, astronauts and mountain climbers spend time in environments with very low pressures, low enough that the ppO2 is not survivable (or at least is not conducive to strenuous activity). So they breathe high concentrations of O2, usually from bottles of pure O2.
Cardiovascular efficiency also plays a major role here. Good cardiovascular health means both increased lung surface tissue for absorption and higher-volume blood flow for delivery of absorbed gases to the tissues which in turn absorb them from the blood (mostly according to the partial tension gradient with a tissue-specific absorption coefficient). So, people with good cardiovascular health can survive lower ppO2 levels.
Nitrogen has no effect on any of this, except as a gas to fill up the non-oxygen part of the mix, and, for divers a gas that will be absorbed under high pressures and released from tissues as pressures decrease. "The bends" is just nitrogen coming out of solution too fast and forming bubbles which block blood vessels.
CO2, on the other hand, is poisonous. I don't recall what the levels are, but above a certain ppCO2, you pass out and then die. CO2 must be removed from your breathing gas. This isn't an issue for open circuit SCUBA divers, whose exhalations float off to the surface, but it's important for rebreather divers and, obviously, for astronauts and others in sealed environments.
Bringing this back to the topic at hand, 17% O2 shouldn't be a problem for anyone of normal cardiovascular health unless the data center is located on a high mountain peak. Someone who has some lung injury or deficient circulation wouldn't want to work in such a data center, but most such people routinely use a nasal flow of pure O2 anyway so, again, it shouldn't be a problem.
Re:But... (Score:4, Informative)
Both you and the parent post are right, in a way.
Nitrogen does nothing, but it is in the way. Oxygen has to diffuse through nitrogen to get to a place where it is consumed, and diffusion is a relatively slow process (yes, I am a chemical engineer, and I did run Stefan-Maxwell simulations).
Say you have a total pressure of 20 kPa, 100% oxygen. If oxygen is consumed at point X by a reaction (I will drop the issue of products diffusing out), all other oxygen around will rush to the spot unhindered (pressure is fast: actually the limit would be the speed of sound). If you have dry air atmosphere, you have 20 kPa oxygen and 80 kPa nitrogen. If oxygen is consumed at point X, nitrogen will accumulate there since air as a whole, not oxygen only, are dragged to point X, and only oxygen is disappearing.
So, yes, what counts for reaction rate is the partial pressure of oxygen, but in many cases (and fires are one of these) diffusion limits how fast oxygen can get to the reaction, so you cannot just pretend you do not have an inert gas in the way.
In fact it is even worse than that, at 100 kPa oxygen (~one atmosphere of pure oxygen) flesh burns "vigorously", as my buddy's professor in combustion used to say. That's why you are not allowed any sort of lighter or match in a hyperbaric chamber, as people inside would burn as gasoline.
Add Lighter Fluid (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Amount of oxygen determines breathability.... which is how you can breathe astonishingly low pressures of pure oxygen in a space capsule.... till it catches on fire and makes a tasty dish of seared astronaut....
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Except that ppO2 = amount of oxygen (i.e. a ppO2 of 3psi is the same amount of O2 whether there's also a ppN2 of 12psi - roughly the composition of air at sea level - or it's pure O2). What you're thinking is that relative oxygen content determines combustability.
It isn't just the oxygen partial pressure. (Score:5, Interesting)
It isn't just the partial pressure of oxygen that's important for fire. It's also the partial pressure of nitrogen. Nitrogen cools the reaction without contributing to it.
So having the partial pressure of oxygen appropriate to 6,000 feet while having even greater than sea-level partial pressure of nitrogen could well keep a fire from burning (at least in some fuels) and make it much harder than usual to get one started even in things (like magnesium) that would be happy to burn in this atmosphere (or even in pure nitrogen).
Meanwhile the human body is mostly interested in the partial pressure of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Walking into the data center would be like suddenly going from local altitude to 6,000 feet (minus the ear-pops and potential for a case of pressure-related issues). You'd run a little less "brightly" than usual. Live in such conditions 24/7 for a month or so and you'll build up additional hemoglobin in your blood until (like people who live at altitude) you're just fine. (I don't know if you'll get back to "full power" living in them 8/5, though.)
Re: (Score:2)
Even at the higher elivations (14,000) things still burn.
Optimal (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:But... (Score:5, Funny)
SSH?
Re: (Score:2)
We'd better buy 2, so we have a backup robot to repair the main one if it breaks down.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
We don't do immersion because it doesn't work over the long term. In the short term, it's fine. Even in a closed system, though, degradation of components leads to the contamination of the coolant, which then must be cleaned.
Cleaning is itself a problem. All filters wear out, and no filters are perfect. The closest things you get are distillation, or reverse osmosis filtering. Distillation requires h
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Dunno, are you assuming a brain damaged beyond the capability to enact revenge (which is pretty low-level wiring in the BOFH brain), or not ?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I saw this comment and saw that someone else had already explained this to someone else that had asked the same stupid question. But since you were modded up to +5 I guess I'll deal with this instance. The air in the data center at sea level with 14% oxygen has approximately the same amount of oxygen per cubic foot as the rarefied air at ~6,000 feet. Why? Because the air is denser. Note that TFA never claims that it is the same percentage of oxygen, only the same amount. These words mean entirely different
Re: (Score:2)
Gee whiz, Professor Le Chatelier -- maybe it's obvious to you that the limiting factor for combustion is relative oxygen, not absolute oxygen. But it wasn't obvious to me from first principles that reducing oxygen by percentage would work differently than removing it by reducing pressure, especially when the article uses exactly the opposite reasoning to explain why the air is safe to breathe.
Re:I call bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
Something will burn with the lower concentration of oxygen, but would be much less likely to ignite into open flame. It'd smolder slowly, and give you much more time to react to it.
It's a confusing analogy to explain a simple technical concept, because tech writers assume everybody is beneath their intelligence. Like putting too much air in a balloon.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
At 6,000 feet or wherever, the oxygen concentration is still ~20%, albeit at lower pressure. This new product doesn't reduce the air pressure, it reduces the oxygen concentration. The effect on a human is approximately equivalent t
Re:Use CO2 - Could even be environmentally friendl (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)