KROHNE flowmeters deliver precise cooling and heating measurement, empowering data centers to cut energy use, lower operating costs, and support sustainable, high-density IT operations.
Beverly, MA: KROHNE, a leading provider of industrial process instrumentation, is supporting the rapid growth of high-density and AI-ready data centers with flow measurement solutions that enable precise control of cooling water and heating circuits, helping operators improve energy efficiency and advance sustainability goals. By providing accurate, real-time insight into liquid-to-chip and chilled water cooling systems, KROHNE flowmeters give data center operators the data they need to optimize thermal performance, reduce operational costs, and maintain maximum uptime.
KROHNE’s reliable flow measurement is central to making energy use both efficient and transparent across cooling water loops, secondary circuits, and heat recovery systems. As data centers expand their power and rack densities, precise flow control of cooling media becomes critical to protecting IT assets, stabilizing operating conditions, and meeting increasingly stringent environmental and ESG requirements. KROHNE’s electromagnetic and ultrasonic flowmeters are designed to deliver stable, long-term performance in these demanding applications, even where installation space is limited or process conditions are challenging.
In advanced liquid cooling architectures, including liquid-to-chip systems, KROHNE flowmeters support tight management of coolant distribution to individual racks and processors. By continuously monitoring flow in glycol-water or other specialized coolant circuits, operators can ensure each chip receives the required thermal headroom, avoiding hotspots while minimizing over-pumping and unnecessary energy consumption. Accurate flow data also underpins automated control strategies that adjust pump speeds and valve positions in real time, allowing facilities to lower energy use without compromising availability or service levels.
A recent data center project featuring hybrid liquid cooling and waste heat recovery demonstrates the impact of KROHNE’s instrumentation on overall energy performance. In this installation, the operator deployed approximately 40 OPTIFLUX 4100 electromagnetic flowmeters to measure glycol-water flow in cooling circuits ranging from DN100 to DN250, enabling detailed monitoring of heat dissipation and system efficiency. The precise, long-term stable measurements support energy-flow monitoring and integration with an advanced thermal management system that captures waste heat and feeds it into district heating networks, turning the data center’s thermal load into a usable energy resource.
Beyond cooling water circuits, KROHNE provides complete solutions for measuring both heat and cold within data center energy systems, including heating circuits, heat exchangers, and district heating connections. By instrumenting these networks with high-accuracy flowmeters and temperature sensors, operators can quantify thermal energy transfer, verify efficiency measures, and document performance improvements against internal targets and regulatory expectations. This transparency in heat and cold measurement supports informed decision-making about system upgrades, facilitates continuous commissioning, and helps data centers demonstrate their commitment to sustainable operations.
The financial benefits of this approach are evident in KROHNE’s application references, where enhanced energy measurement of heating and cooling water circuits has led to significant reductions in fossil fuel consumption and utility costs. In one building-scale installation, KROHNE flowmeters and temperature measurement enabled detailed tracking of hot and chilled water flows between geothermal probes, heat pumps, and concrete core conditioning systems, contributing to a substantial decrease in natural gas use and improving overall energy efficiency. These same principles apply directly to data centers, where small percentage gains in cooling efficiency can translate into large absolute savings due to high continuous loads.
KROHNE’s focus on reliability and long service life further strengthens the business case for investment in precision flow measurement in data centers. With a background in demanding industrial environments such as chemical processing and wastewater treatment, KROHNE designs its flowmeters for decades of operation, ensuring stable measurement performance with minimal maintenance. This durability, combined with seamless integration into existing monitoring and control platforms, allows data center operators to establish robust, long-term energy management strategies built on trusted instrumentation data.
As data centers continue to scale in support of cloud, AI, and digital services, KROHNE’s portfolio of flowmeters and related instrumentation is positioned as a foundational element of energy-efficient, sustainable cooling infrastructure. By enabling precise measurement of cooling water and heating circuits in both conventional chilled-water and advanced liquid-to-chip systems, KROHNE helps operators control energy streams, reduce operational costs, and progress toward net-zero and sustainability objectives without compromising uptime.
For more information on KROHNE’s data center cooling and energy measurement solutions, visit https://cmp.krohne.com/data-center/.
About KROHNE
KROHNE is a worldwide technological leader in the development, manufacture and distribution of accurate, reliable and cost-effective measuring instruments for the process industries. KROHNE focuses on forming partnerships with its customers to provide them with the most reliable and innovative solutions available in the marketplace. For more information about KROHNE’s complete line of measuring instrumentation for the process industries, contact KROHNE at 1-800-FLOWING (978-535-6060 in MA); email: [email protected], Linked In, X, or visit us.krohne.com.
