A data center is not a commercial office building. Office buildings tolerate HVAC failures with discomfort. Data centers do not tolerate them at all.
Server hardware generates sustained high-density heat. Cooling systems run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. When a cooling unit underperforms or a filter program fails, the consequence is not a warm meeting room. The Ponemon Institute has calculated that the average data center outage costs approximately $9,000 per minute.
Brookaire, the Fair Lawn, New Jersey commercial air filter manufacturer and distributor founded in 1974, has published a free guide for data center facility managers covering the four air filtration challenges specific to mission-critical environments and how to build a filter program that supports continuous operations.
The guide is available at no cost and requires no registration at airfilters.brookaire.com/data-center-hvac-air-filtration-guide.
CHALLENGE 1: WILDFIRE SMOKE IS NOW A CRITICAL UPTIME THREAT
On June 7, 2023, the Newark-Secaucus data center corridor in New Jersey, one of the highest concentrations of data center square footage in the United States, experienced full-day hazardous PM2.5 air quality levels from Canadian wildfire smoke. Buildings with MERV 8 filtration provided essentially no meaningful protection as PM2.5 concentrations climbed through the day.
Ashburn, Virginia, home to more data center square footage than any other geographic area in the world, experienced multiple smoke-impacted days during the same wildfire season. The Twin Cities data center corridor in Minnesota, expanding along the I-494 corridor south of Minneapolis, now faces wildfire smoke events multiple times per year as Canadian and western U.S. smoke reaches the Midwest via prevailing wind patterns.
For data centers in regions with recurring wildfire smoke, MERV 13 or higher is a recommended filtration target for outdoor-air intake systems, provided the equipment can maintain required airflow with the selected filters. The guide covers emergency restocking options for facilities that need to upgrade filtration during an active smoke event, including Brookaire's no-minimum order policy and 48-hour custom production.
CHALLENGE 2: PRECISION COOLING FILTER SIZING
CRAC and CRAH precision cooling units used in data centers across Ashburn, Newark-Secaucus, and Minneapolis use manufacturer-specific filter configurations that do not correspond to standard commercial filter catalog sizes. In Ashburn, the majority of large data center operators run precision cooling equipment with non-standard filter slot dimensions. Standard catalog filters leave air bypass gaps in these slots, reducing filtration efficiency in the environments that need it most.
The guide covers how to measure precision cooling filter slots correctly, how to specify MERV rating and frame material for data center environments, and how Brookaire's 48-hour custom filter production with no minimum order addresses sourcing for non-standard CRAC and CRAH configurations.
CHALLENGE 3: HUMIDITY AND FILTER DEGRADATION
Energy-efficient data center cooling increasingly relies on economizer modes that use outside air directly when outdoor temperatures allow. This is effective for energy savings and also a filter degradation accelerant. Standard beverage board filter frames absorb moisture and weaken under sustained humidity exposure. Pleats collapse prematurely. A filter that should run three months reaches end of service in six weeks.
The guide addresses filter media and frame selection for data centers running economizer cooling, including moisture-resistant options for facilities in New Jersey's coastal corridor, Minnesota's high-humidity summer months, and Northern Virginia.
CHALLENGE 4: BUILDING A NO-DOWNTIME FILTER PROGRAM
Data centers cannot schedule a maintenance window that stops airflow. Filter changes happen on live equipment. This changes the logistics requirements for a data center filter program compared to any other commercial environment.
The guide covers pre-staged inventory approaches, how to use Brookaire's customer portal to schedule recurring filter deliveries by rack row or cooling unit zone, and how emergency restocking works during active wildfire smoke events from Brookaire's distribution centers in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Massachusetts.
"Brookaire's data center team works closely with customers to coordinate air filter deliveries with their preventive maintenance schedules," said Lynne Laake, Marketing Director at Brookaire. "The guide was written because data center facility managers face filtration challenges that are genuinely different from the rest of the commercial market. Uptime is not negotiable in these environments and the filter program has to reflect that."
The full guide is at airfilters.brookaire.com/data-center-hvac-air-filtration-guide. For additional technical reading, Brookaire's white paper on data center HVAC challenges is available at brookaire.com/data-center-hvac-challenges.
ABOUT BROOKAIRE
Brookaire is a third-generation, family-operated manufacturer and distributor of commercial HVAC air filters headquartered in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. Founded in 1974, the company operates distribution centers at 17-02 Nevins Road, Fair Lawn, NJ 07410; 581 Manchester Ct, York, PA 17408; 8095 215th St W, Lakeville, MN 55044; 254 Bodwell St Unit A, Avon, MA 02322; and 2535 Prime Way, Knoxville, TN 37918. Brookaire manufactures standard and custom pleated filters, HEPA filters, carbon pleated filters, bag and pocket filters, and the DeltaPleat premium filter line, all from 100 percent US-sourced materials. Services include scheduled job-site delivery, job tagging, real-time tracking, a customer portal for multi-site account management, 48-hour custom filter production, and filter disposal pickup.
Brookaire serves HVAC contractors and facility managers across New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Delaware, Washington DC, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Tennessee.
Data center HVAC guide: airfilters.brookaire.com/data-center-hvac-air-filtration-guide
Data center white paper: brookaire.com/data-center-hvac-challenges
Resource library: airfilters.brookaire.com
All locations: brookaire.com/locations
Follow Brookaire:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/brookaire-company
Instagram: instagram.com/brookaire
Facebook: facebook.com/brookaire
YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UChSapJieifNddxqEyqj1ESQ
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Media Contact:
Lynne Laake
Marketing Director, Brookaire Corporation
(973) 473-7527
Source: Brookaire Corporation
Release ID: 2677159
