Laura Timberlake
Lubricant brand Castrol and immersion cooling systems organisation Submer have signed an agreement aiming to accelerate the adoption of immersion cooling as a pathway to more efficient and sustainable data centre operations.
The companies plan to develop a new generation of immersion cooling fluids and collaborate on developing the global supply and standards.
Immersion cooling is typically used to cool IT equipment by submerging computer hardware in dielectric liquids that conduct heat away from the equipment.
Rebecca Yates, Vice President Advanced Mobility and industrial Products for Applied Sciences at bp (Castrol’s parent company), says the collaboration has created opportunities for the companies to deliver products that help save energy while delivering high performance and increased efficiency.
The organisations hope their combined experience in thermal management and immersion cooling will lead to a more sustainable solution in the way data centres are managed. They believe they can significantly reduce the water usage and power consumption via immersion cooling.
Co-founder and CEO at Submer, Daniel Pope, says that immersion cooling digital infrastructures allow data centres to be run with considerably reduced energy and space.
“Additionally, with utilising heat recovery and reuse technology, we turn them into highly efficient thermal power sources that can deliver hot water to neighbouring businesses,” he says.
With joint sustainability goals, the companies aim to support the data centre industry with new integrated solutions.
Submer has also been in the news locally. Macquarie Data Centres has signed a multi-year deal with ResetData to use the company’s data centre technology.
The deal will see ResetData host its disaster recovery-as-a-service in Macquarie’s data centres as it targets government, gaming, video production, rendering and other data-heavy industries trying to balance cost and climate concerns with rising compute needs.
According to the project team, the immersion cooling technology can reduce CO2 emissions by up to 45 per cent and creates zero wastewater. It also reduces the physical footprint by up to 90 per cent, and the heat generated by the infrastructure can be 99 per cent recycled.
Image courtesy of Submer
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