I recently attended Data Center World 2019 at the Phoenix Convention Center. It was a good show with informative sessions. One in particular stood out, namely “Liquid Immersion Cooling: Three Case Studies Show Compelling Data for Power Savings,” presented by Jack W. Kolar, VP, mission critical products, Modular Solutions Laboratory.

According to Kolar, although the industry is not quite ready to fully exploit immersion cooling, the future is certainly bright. Kolar has conducted research on the technology and compared three cooling cases: a best-in-class chilling system with centrifugal chiller; lowest possible capital cost, outside air only; liquid immersion cooling, lowest possible energy. The cooling burden, represented in percentage of computing power, was presented in a simplified load list for each method based on results from tests that Kolar and his team performed as follows: centrifugal chiller system, 23.47%; outside air cooling, 4.13%; and liquid immersion, 1.86%. Kolar said that the load list for liquid immersion cooling burden is not best case, it is actual case, which is an exciting result. Kolar directed attendees to read Julius Neudorfer’s “Hot Aisle Insight” column from Mission Critical Magazine’s January/February 2019 titled, “Liquid Cooling Moves Upstream to Hyperscale Data Centers” for more information. We will keep an eye on this technology and report on it as the industry moves towards its adoption.

Caroline Fritz

Editor