Immersion cooling
Immersion cooling
Immersion cooling consists of immersing the IT hardware, such as CPUs, hard drives and memory boards directly into dielectric liquids, which cool the system.
The heat generated by the operating IT systems is directly transferred to the coolant, without the need of active cooling components such heat sinks, fans, and interface materials commonly used for air cooling. Apart from a highly improved cooling efficiency, immersion cooling prevents the oxidation and reduces the thermal expansion stress by eliminating the temperature fluctuations in the system, which are the root cause for most of the physical degradation of microelectronics over time. Therefore, the immersion cooling ensures a longer lifespan of the IT infrastructure. Certain immersion cooling systems function through natural convection that circulated the dielectric liquid, thus greatly improving the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE).
In regions with extreme weather conditions (hot climate, water scarcity), weather fluctuations or where seismic events are regular occurrences, the immersion cooling is the solution of choice for data centers as traditional air cooling cannot maintain performance and reliability.
The composition of the dielectric liquid depends on the cooling technology (single-phase, two-phase or direct-to-chip cooling). Single-phase and two-phase technologies use dielectric liquids which are based on fluorocarbons (HFOs/ HCFOs) blended with other technical fluids. Direct-to-chip cooling is not an immersion cooling per se (even though it is promoted as such) and it can use non-dielectric fluids (e.g. glycols) because the coolant never comes in contact with the component. However, the use of glycols poses major risks in case of leaks and direct contact with the system components, thus dielectric fluids are sometimes used with this technology.
The data centers immersion cooling market grew from USD 244 million in 2021[1] to USD 631.93 million in 2023 and is projected to reach USD 1,884.16 million by 2028, at a CAGR of 24.42% during the forecast period (2023-2028)[2].