When it comes to commercial two-phase Immersion Cooling one of the few names in the market is Allied Control. Their description of two-phase Immersion Cooling is:
“In a two-phase immersion cooled system, electronic components are submerged into a bath of dielectric heat transfer liquids, which are much better heat conductors than air, water or oil. With their various low boiling points (i.e. 49°C vs. 100°C in water), the fluids boil on the surface of heat generating components and rising vapor passively takes care of heat transfer.
It is this simplicity that eliminates conventional cooling hardware and results in better cooling efficiency. Compared to traditional air, water or oil cooling, this passive process results in the use of much less energy.”
What is Two-Phase Immersion Cooling?
This basically means that the coolant employed changes state. During that change of state, it takes the heat to the top of the tank in a gasified form. Through a condensing coil, the gas is cooled-off and rains down in the form of liquid back into the pool of coolant to start the process again.
What are the advantages of two-phase immersion cooling?
The clear advantages are that there’s no need for coolant pumps (of course the water pumps / cooling towers are still required) and that hardware can be easily reused as the coolant is quickly evaporated in the ambient atmosphere.
What are the disadvantages of two-phase immersion cooling?
The main disadvantages are the elevated price of the two-phase coolant (which makes this solution financially non-viable for the standard), the high-volatility of the coolant in gas form and its “low global warming potentials”, as stated in the 3M product page (on the contrary of our environmentally friendly SmartCoolant, the 3M Novec solution used by Allied Control is a mineral-based oil, i.e. petroleum-based).
At Submer, we’re designing our solution based on single-phase Immersion Cooling for two main reasons:
- Biodegradable coolant (human and environment hazardous free) and compatible with fiber optics.
- Price point of the solution that allows any size Data Center to seriously consider Immersion Cooling as the de-facto solution for server cooling (ROI < 1 year).
Submers’ target Customers are the world that doesn’t want to move their infrastructure to cold climates (mainly because of end-customer proximity and local security policies) and still needs to compete with the Big Boys of the market.
It is also the perfect solution for high-density applications like blockchain, HPC, Deep Learning, and Cryptocurrency mining (Bitcoin, Etherium, Ripple, Litecoin, etc.) using any ASIC or GPU hardware.
Contact us to reduce your costs now.
