As part of its preventive maintenance, Orange wanted to change the two power supply motors for the cooling system in one of its data centers. Unfortunately, the two valves flanking these motors are leaking, to avoid shutting down the installation and thus enabling these changes. Two cryogenic plugs were placed upstream and downstream of the faulty valves, blocking the fluid.
CRYOPIPE intervened at the Orange data center, from which all French Internet connections originate and terminate. An eleven-storey building with six basements, three of which are filled with hundreds of servers. The cooling system was several decades old, and for safety reasons it was necessary to replace the system’s two feed pumps, but the upstream and downstream valves were leaking. I intervened to place two cryogenic plugs on DN180s at the front of the upstream valve and at the back of the downstream valve. These cryogenic plugs blocked the fluid for the time needed to change the two valves. While the fluid was freezing, the bleed valve could be changed. The motors could be changed without draining the system, with only a limited shutdown. The work had to be carried out quickly, as the servers rapidly rise in temperature, putting themselves in danger of blocking millions of connections. The intervention was carefully prepared and planned by Orange and its service provider. There were no overheating alerts.
