page_title: Immersion cooling
section_title: Evolution
hierarchical_section_title: Immersion cooling / Evolution
caption_attribution_description: English: Network Device immersed in synthetic single-phase, Liquid Coolant
context_page_description: Immersion cooling is an IT cooling practice by which IT components and other electronics, including complete servers, are submerged in a thermally conductive dielectric liquid or coolant. Heat is removed from the system by circulating liquid into direct contact with hot components, then through cool heat exchangers. Fluids suitable for immersion cooling have very good insulating properties to ensure that they can safely come into contact with energized electronic components.
context_section_description: Immersion cooling has the potential of becoming a popular server cooling solution, in particular for green data centers, as it allows operators to drastically reduce their energy usage through the elimination of the expensive air cooling infrastructure including on-board server fans, CRACs, A/C compressors, air-circulation fans, necessary duct work, air handlers, and other active ancillary systems such as dehumidifiers.  These systems are replaced with efficient low speed liquid circulation pumps and heat exchanger and/or dry cooler systems.  The power reduction that can be achieved through the use of immersion cooling is often measured in terms of Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE).  However, It is important to note that the definitions of PUE for air-cooled devices and liquid immersion cooled devices differs in one important aspect, which makes such direct comparisons misleading in favor of air cooling.
  PUE for air-cooled data centers, as defined by the Green Grid, includes the power used by the fans and other active cooling components found on-board the servers as part of the IT Equipment Energy,
  PUE for liquid immersion cooling excludes these values from the IT Equipment Energy component because these system elements (in particular on board fans) are generally removed from the IT equipment as they are not necessary to circulate the dielectric coolants, and often actually impede the circulation of the dielectric coolant.
  This discrepancy in the definition of PUE for the different cooling methods results in the PUE of air-cooled data centers generally being overstated by anywhere from 10-20% when compared against the PUE of a liquid immersion cooled facility of the same power usage.
  Servers and other IT hardware cooled by immersion cooling do not require fans to circulate the dielectric liquid, thus they are removed from the system prior to immersion.  Thermal pastes which are typically used on heat spreaders for CPUs and other chips may require replacement with a different compound in order to avoid the thermal degradation within the dielectric liquid. Depending on the type of application, solder, Indium foil and thermally conductive epoxies may be used as a replacement materials.
  The temperatures used in immersion cooling are determined by the highest temperature at which the devices being immersed can reliably operate.  For servers this temperature range is typically between 15 to 65 °C (59 to 149 °F), however in ASIC based crypto mining devices this range is often extended up to 75C.  This increase in the high end of the temperature range allows data centers operators to use entirely passive dry coolers, or much more efficient evaporative or adiabatic cooling towers instead of chiller-based air cooling or water chillers.  This increase in the temperature range also allows operators using Single-phase Immersion Coolants to more effectively use the change in outdoor temperatures to get more efficient cooling from their systems because the single-phase systems are not limited in their effectiveness by the boiling point of the coolant as is the case with two-phase coolants.
  Multiple relevant brands like Intel and Facebook have already validated the advantages of submerging servers.
  Current commercial applications for immersion cooling range from datacenter oriented solutions for commodity server cooling, server clusters, HPCC applications and Cryptocurrency mining. and mainstream cloud-based and web hosting architectures.  Electric vehicle and battery manufacturers also employ liquid immersion cooling in batteries, drive-train, Kinetic energy recovery systems, electric motors, electric motor controllers, and other on-board electronic sub systems.  Liquid immersion cooling is also used in the thermal management of LEDs, Lasers, X-Ray machines, and Magnetic Resonance Imaging devices.
  A different industry where immersion cooling is applied to electronic components is deep sea research where Remotely Operated Underwater Vehicles with electronic equipment are filled with Single-phase Liquid Dielectrics to both protect them fro
caption: Network router and smart-phone immersed in synthetic single-phase, liquid immersion coolant
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