Immersion Cooling at Scale

Immersion cooling is the most sustainable form of liquid cooling:

• It reduces power and direct & indirect water consumption, therefore reducing CO2 emissions.
• It lets your infrastructure operate at higher temperatures, providing more free cooling time.
• Higher power density leads to less real estate needed.
• Immersion cooling fluid is non-toxic, biodegradable, GWP=0, and it can be recycled.
• It protects the hardware from degradating agents such as dust, moisture and vibrations, which plays in favor of its lifespan.

Keep reading about the sustainable benefits of immersion here.

Submer’s validated fluids are non-toxic, synthetic fluids designed for immersion cooling. Some handling and operation guidelines must be taken into consideration, which are detailed in the safety data sheets.

Global warming has exceeded 1ºC since pre-industrial times. The fact that immersion cooling infrastructure can operate at higher temperatures provides more opportunities to handle the rising ambient temperatures we’re currently witnessing and the persistent rise that’s forecasted for the future – less demanding infrastructure leads to reduced emissions.

Also, thanks to its thermal inertia, the cooling capability in the pod remains intact for some time in the event of total failure of the cooling infrastructure. With the right design and depending on the selected operating conditions, this feature helps increase resiliency.​

For more on how immersion an face today’s industry challenges, check out our blog post.

The fact that the cooling infrastructure can operate at higher temperatures provides more opportunities for free cooling, therefore direct water consumption can be reduced to zero (depending on the location and operating conditions).

More efficient and less demanding cooling infrastructure leads to reduced energy consumption, which positively affects the indirect water consumption. Keep reading about immersion’s effect on water consumption here.

Virtually all the heat generated by the IT is transferred into a single body of immersion fluid, which will be circulating through one of the sides of a liquid-liquid heat exchanger. The heat is transferred to a closed water loop circulating on the other side of the heat exchanger. This hot water can be used straight away for heat reuse applications if its temperature is high enough – depending on IT hardware selected and operating conditions – or it can go through a Heat Recovery Unit (HRU), which is a equipment designed to guarantee optimal energy recovery by adjusting the water temperature.

Depending on the availability requirements of your datacenter and the SLAs with the heat offtaker, a standard heat rejection system may be needed.

Find out more about how to apply heat reuse in your datacenter here.