Vertiv, a global provider of critical digital infrastructure and continuity solutions, on Monday announced the Vertiv Liebert® AFC Chiller, a high-density outdoor, packaged free cooling unit that provides capacities required to support general compute and enable future-friendly solutions to adapt to hybrid data centers deploying liquid cooling applications common in AI and high-performance compute. 

The Liebert® AFC extends Vertiv’s chiller offering and complements the thermal management portfolio that includes direct-to-chip, immersion, rack, row, room, and heat rejection technologies. The Liebert AFC chiller has been available in EMEA since 2018 and is now available for order in North America.

Data center chillers are a key link in the overall thermal management chain for chilled water cooling systems. Chillers provide the heat rejection loop to control and manage the chilled water that is used to reject heat collected at any level of the data center, from the room down to the chip. The Liebert AFC chiller is an integral part of the overall Vertiv solution to simplify data center deployment and management. By pairing the Liebert AFC chillers with Vertiv™ chilled water data center room cooling products such as the Vertiv™ Liebert® CW chilled water cooling system, Vertiv™ Liebert® CWA thermal wall, and custom chilled water systems, operators can address the cooling needs of colocation and cloud data center applications.

“Free cooling chillers have long been part of our EMEA portfolio, with heavy adoption in the region. The addition of the Liebert AFC chillers to our North America chiller portfolio significantly increases our ability to deliver end-to-end thermal solutions, positioning Vertiv to better solve the challenge of increased complexity within the data center,” said John Niemann, SVP of the global thermal line of business at Vertiv. “In addition to other global sites, we are adding manufacturing capacity to produce chillers in the Americas to meet the unique demands of the market.”

As a packaged solution, the Vertiv™ Liebert® AFC chilled water cooling system, Vertiv™ Liebert® CWA is designed for energy-efficient operation of data centers or processes, offering free cooling operation with higher supply/return water temperatures. Key efficiency components include Vertiv™ Liebert® iCOM™ controls for precise temperature regulation, high efficiency EC fan motors, oversized free-cooling coils for improved heat exchange, and optional inverter screw compressors. The system uses low Global Warming Potential (GWP) refrigerant, with options including R513A, R1234ze, and R515B.