What makes liquid immersion cooling the technology in the future

Liquid immersion cooling has generated a lot of attention, with experts describing it as a technology in the future. Compared to traditional equipment heat removal solutions such as liquid cooling, immersion cooling involves giving IT appliances a bath, where they are submerged into a pool of dielectric fluid.

Its effectiveness in data centre cooling has been one of the benefits it has delivered to the users, where power consumption has been reduced significantly. The fact that they run without the use of fans means a reduction of up to 40% of the electricity cost. Compared with air cooling, immersion cooling can remove heat up to 1500 times more efficiently; this has direct and indirect savings to the data centre operators; they are spending less money on energy and maintenance costs, and when it comes to expansion of their capacity, they are already prepared to handle bigger loads.

Future data demands

Estimates indicate that the world will generate more data in the next five years than in the last fifty combined. The explosive data growth requires effective systems. Data centres are at the heart of this development. With the massive demand for their services, they will need to utilise technologies that guarantee optimal and effective delivery. Immersion cooling will provide the much-needed efficiency in cooling and water consumption, allowing operators to lower costs while delivering quality services. Reliance on traditional cooling methods may mean putting up with outages and other issues arising from overheating the data centre equipment. However, with futuristic technology, many problems are solved, meaning that the exponential growth in the digital world will not be hampered.

Achieving sustainability goals

With reduced energy consumption, data centres that have adopted liquid immersion cooling can quickly achieve their sustainability goals. Reduction of reliance on fossil fuels or dirty energy is one of the goals that businesses are trying to achieve to ensure sustainable production. Data centres, in this case, are helping in easing the exploitation of fossil fuels as a primary energy source. With reduced fossil fuel energy, they are contributing to a cleaner world. Their overall carbon footprint is significantly reduced. Data centres that have adopted immersion cooling play a crucial role in helping states achieve their nationally determined contributions by lowering emissions and delivering net zero operations.

Criticism

Even those who see the cooling technology as coming earlier than needed agree that it is an efficient method; of its capacity to deliver significant benefits. Although the critics agree that it deserves the industry’s attention, they argue that it is not for deployment in the typical data centre but rather the high-density facilities. This is far from the truth; as different sizes of data centre operators have reported immense benefits from adopting the cooling technology. Their reduced power bills, space, environmentally friendly working spaces, and an overall reduction in resources needed to put up and maintain data centres are some of the benefits quoted by different operators. While there is agreement that the technology is futuristic, those who have adopted it now are reaping the benefits.

Some may see liquid immersion cooling as a technology ahead of time, but if we are to solve the problems that may arise due to exponential growth in data-driven components, we need to think ahead. This is what liquid immersion cooling provides, and in the process, it delivers many benefits to the users and our planet!