Immersion cooling – what is it? Although still pretty niche and early within its adaptation phase, immersion cooling deals with using fluid that has high heat rejection and low thermal resistance. Immersion cooling is currently used in datacenters and high end computing scenarios. Since liquid is much more efficient than air for cooling, more and more high end solutions are moving this way. Data centers are notorious for generating tons of heat, with a plethora of high end machines always running. High end home PCs have closed loop water systems already, so we already privy to this kind of solution.
How It Works
Dunking a bunch of electrical components in water sounds pretty outrageous when you think of it, but we can assure you it isn’t. Utilizing “dielectric” (doesn’t conduct electricity) fluid is the critical component to this cooling method. It breaks down to two different categories of liquid: oils and engineered fluids. For the sake of the article, we won’t go deeper into single phase vs two-phase cooling. How much better of a solution than air cooling is immersion cooling? Try a 10x (up to 20x) heat rejection capacity, leading to increase in efficiency by up to 40% – which is incredible! This liquid captures and dissipates the heat generated by components extremely quickly and effectively.
What Are the Benefits? Drawbacks?
We’ve already mentioned that the advantages include a massive upgrade to heat reduction and operating efficiency. What we have yet to mention, is that it is also an upgrade in noise output and space consumption. Less fans are required, leading to less noise and more effective use of a chassis. Conversely, the major drawback is cost to set up. Because the technology is still extremely early and currently only meant for high end application, the initial cost is much higher. We are confident that as time progresses and it becomes more readily available in units, costs will eventually decrease.
What Role Does Immersion Cooling Play in HVAC?
Given the state of where immersion cooling is, some may feel this post is way too early – and maybe it might be. Although HVAC systems certainly need cooling improvements, opportunity cost of immersion cooling is still too high. Within the industry it is still in the research & development phase, but certainly the target destination. Currently, condensers have quite large fans and take up more space due to the cooling required. Theoretically, immersion systems will also eliminate the need for such large fans over time. The general rule of thumb we’ve seen with technology is over time, smaller devices can pack the same amount of punch. We don’t expect the HVAC industry to be any different, as emissions and energy efficiency are still big concerns.
Concluding Thoughts
Taking into account we know that the HVAC industry is going to grow ~4-6% over the next six years, it feels like a very natural progression to get to immersion cooling. Growth of tech, and increasing demands while needing to be conscious of environmental effects will spur this development. Granted, there are plenty of logistics that we aren’t accounting for, so it might take some time to get everything streamlined. However, we do feel that it is certainly the future path of cooling within HVAC. Size efficiency, heat dissipation, noise, are all current areas for improvement within units that we have now. We’re excited to see how the hardware within the industry evolves over time, so keep your eyes peeled!