en.Wedoany.com Reported - On July 8, 2026, ChemTreat, a U.S. industrial water treatment company, released a white paper titled "Operational Readiness Framework for Data Center Cooling Systems." The white paper outlines best practices and methodologies aimed at helping project teams and contractors address new challenges arising from the construction and commissioning of AI data centers.
System reliability has become a key performance indicator in the data center industry. In 2025, most major data center outage events cost over $100,000, and the target availability for high-density AI facilities tends to reach "five nines" (99.999%), allowing only approximately 5.26 minutes of unplanned downtime per year. However, many projects still rely on outdated water treatment preparation standards and hydraulic pipe cleaning specifications, which may allow contaminants to enter the cooling system before startup, increasing the likelihood of corrosion and downstream performance issues.
The white paper identifies a critical gap in current project delivery: after reviewing hundreds of data center specifications, ChemTreat found that relatively few included meaningful input from cooling system and fluid chemistry experts. Expertise in cooling is often introduced late in the construction lifecycle, after key decisions regarding water system configuration and chemical treatment integration have already been made. This limits opportunities to establish measurable handover standards and may introduce hidden reliability risks before the facility becomes operational.
Jacob Paugh, Senior Director of Global High-Tech at ChemTreat, stated that the framework provides a practical approach for owners, engineers, and contractors to address potential issues proactively, rather than compromising uptime after racks are operational due to repairs for corrosion and contamination. Dr. Philip Yu, Senior Technical Service Advisor at ChemTreat, noted that commissioning has traditionally been viewed as a construction milestone, whereas it should serve as the foundation for long-term reliability. By introducing cooling system and fluid chemistry expertise early in the design phase, project teams can tailor the commissioning process to each site's unique water quality specifications, discharge, and infrastructure constraints.
ChemTreat's operational readiness framework is based on five core principles of excellence in commissioning, including a pre-construction preparation assessment that introduces cooling expertise upstream in the design process, as well as a practical day-one readiness checklist covering design, construction, commissioning, and governance. Together, these elements help project teams establish measurable criteria for evaluating cooling system readiness before AI workloads go live.
Through its Blueprint to Beyond™ program, ChemTreat supports data center cooling systems from pre-construction to steady-state operation. The program integrates experienced field engineers, application-specific treatment solutions, CTSolutions® D2C direct-to-chip cooling components, advanced monitoring, and analytical laboratory validation.
