Carrier launches CDU with 2°C ATD
Author: Joe Peck
Carrier, a manufacturer of HVAC, refrigeration, and fire and security equipment, has introduced a new coolant distribution unit (CDU), designed to support the growing use of liquid cooling in UK data centres while improving energy performance, resilience, and space utilisation.
The Carrier CDU is intended to help operators manage higher rack densities and increasing cooling demands. It is designed to support liquid-cooled IT environments and provide greater control over energy use and system uptime.
As liquid cooling becomes more widely adopted to meet efficiency targets, the CDU enables deployment at scale through management of secondary coolant loops. Carrier says this can help reduce pumping energy and optimise heat removal across varying load conditions.
Thermal performance and system efficiency
The CDU uses modular heat exchangers that can deliver approach temperatures as low as 2°C, compared with more typical 4°C systems. According to Carrier, this can enable up to 15% chiller energy savings, allowing more electrical capacity to be allocated to IT loads rather than cooling.
Oliver Sanders, Data Centre Commercial Director UK&I, Carrier HVAC, notes, “Data centre leaders across the UK are focused on increasing capacity without increasing risk.
“This new Carrier CDU supports that goal by giving operators greater thermal stability, more flexibility in system design, and better visibility of cooling performance. The result is improved energy efficiency and smoother scalability as liquid cooling demand grows.”
The CDU is designed for use in mission-critical environments and includes redundant pumps and power supplies to support continued operation during maintenance or unexpected events.
Intelligent controls manage fluid temperatures and flow rates in real time, with the aim of maintaining stable conditions for high-density servers while reducing energy consumption.
Integration, scalability, and monitoring
Carrier states that the CDU is designed for simplified integration into existing facilities, allowing liquid cooling to be introduced with minimal disruption.
The product range includes multiple unit sizes from 1.3 to 5 MW, enabling operators to align cooling capacity with current and future high-density requirements.
The system is intended to support direct-to-chip cooling as well as mixed cooling environments. Carrier says it is designed to maintain stable performance under fluctuating workloads and higher ambient temperatures.
“Liquid cooling adoption is accelerating, and operators want systems that deliver both efficiency and certainty,” Oliver continues. “With this Carrier CDU, customers can integrate high-density workloads confidently, knowing their cooling system is designed to maximise uptime, efficiency, and long-term value.”
The CDU integrates with Carrier’s control platforms to support centralised monitoring, performance optimisation, and energy management. This is intended to help data centre teams track cooling trends, respond to load changes, and plan capacity more effectively.
The Carrier CDU forms part of Carrier’s QuantumLeap portfolio of data centre technologies.
For more from Carrier, click here.
