Refrigerant supply for data centres
A cooling load unlike any other
Most refrigeration work is seasonal. Comfort cooling peaks in the hot months and falls away; cold storage varies with what is in the store. A data hall does neither. The heat comes from the racks, the racks run at all hours, and the load is roughly the same in December as in May.
Two consequences follow. The first is that plant runs up far more operating hours per year than equivalent equipment elsewhere, so wear, seal fatigue and leak development are correspondingly faster. The second is that there is no comfortable window in which to take a machine down. Maintenance happens on redundancy, under change control, against a clock.
| System | Role | Typical refrigerants |
|---|---|---|
| Centrifugal / screw chillers | Primary chilled-water generation | R-134a; newer plant on lower-GWP alternatives |
| CRAC / CRAH units | In-hall air handling | R-410A, R-407C |
| Ancillary and office | UPS rooms, offices, security | R-410A, R-32 |
Hyderabad is now a serious data-centre market
This is no longer a small segment locally. Knight Frank India's 2025 market update records Hyderabad's live capacity rising from 60.9 MW in 2022 to 151.4 MW by the end of 2025, with a committed and early-stage pipeline in the region of 1.9 GW — second in India only to Mumbai.
Growth of that shape changes the servicing market around it. Every megawatt of IT load brings chiller plant, CRAC units, an AMC contractor and a maintenance regime — and a standing requirement for refrigerant that has to be available on the day it is needed rather than the week after.
What continuity actually requires from a supplier
“We will get it for you” is not a supply arrangement for a facility under an uptime SLA. What works:
- Tell us the plant list. If we know which gases your estate runs on, availability planning stops being reactive
- Order ahead of the hot season. March to June is when everyone in Hyderabad discovers a leak at once
- Keep the documentation chain intact — batch traceability and SDS on file, because data-centre operators are audited like any other critical infrastructure
- Buy accessories on the same dispatch — nitrogen-purge consumables, copper, driers. The accessories range
We do not publish availability or prices on the site, because both move. Ask and you get the current position rather than a stale one.
Leaks in a continuously-running estate
Because the plant never idles, leak rates on data-centre chillers tend to sit at the higher end of comfort-cooling experience. That has an emissions consequence a growing number of operators now report on: fugitive refrigerant is a Scope 1 emission, and at chiller-sized charges the tonnage is not trivial.
A 300 kg R-134a chiller losing ten percent a year emits about 43 tonnes of CO2e — from one machine, with no meter recording it. Operators with net-zero commitments increasingly want that number properly derived rather than screened, and the derivation runs off refrigerant purchase records. The method is here.
The operational read is simpler still: if the same machine needs topping up every year, it has a leak, and the gas bill is the cheap part of the problem.
Quick answers
Which refrigerants do data centres use?
Chilled-water plant runs mainly on R-134a, with newer chillers adopting lower-GWP alternatives. In-hall CRAC and CRAH units typically use R-410A or R-407C, and ancillary comfort systems use R-410A or R-32.
Why does refrigerant continuity matter more for data centres?
Because the cooling load never falls away and the site runs under uptime commitments. There is no seasonal window in which plant can wait for a delivery, so availability on the day is a contractual issue rather than a convenience.
Do you supply AMC contractors working on data centres?
Yes. Supply is to the trade as well as to end users, with accessories dispatched alongside the gas and documentation available for every line.
- Knight Frank India — India Data Centre Market Update 2025; Hyderabad live capacity and committed pipeline — knightfrank.co.in.
- GHG Protocol — refrigeration and air-conditioning fugitive-emission accounting — ghgprotocol.org.
- ASHRAE — data-centre thermal guidelines and equipment classes — ashrae.org.
This guide is general information compiled from the cited sources — not legal, safety or engineering advice. Read our full disclaimer.
Related: Telangana clusters · Refrigerant leaks and Scope 1 · R-134a supply · MEP & AMC supply