If you dip your toes into immersion cooling, watch out for dielectric liquid sharks

The small pool of suppliers understand their market power

APRICOT The market for dielectric liquid required for immersion cooling is dominated by a small number of players that are aware of their market power.

That’s the opinion of Chris Street, group chief revenue officer at Singapore-based datacenter investment company ST Telemedia.

Speaking on a panel today at the Asia Pacific Regional Internet Conference on Operational Technologies (APRICOT) in Kuala Lumpur, Street said two companies dominate the market for dielectric liquid – the nonconducting fluids increasingly used to cool datacenter equipment.

The liquids are in demand because accelerators consume plenty of energy and output lots of heat. Immersion cooling is passive – it cools without requiring energy inputs. Datacenter operators of all sizes are acutely aware of the need to keep their energy consumption, and bills, as low as possible.

Immersion cooling is therefore so not right now.

Street said supply of dielectric liquid is yet to scale, and that the two main suppliers know they are in a strong position when negotiating with customers. He expects the market will mature – as markets do – and prices will eventually fall. But for now, he rates dielectric liquid market concentration as an issue would-be users of immersion cooling need to be aware of, because it may impact their plans and budgets.

Another issue Street says can hamper adoption of immersion cooling is that some manufacturers will not honor warranties of hardware when it’s dunked in dielectrics.

The Register has previously covered Australian outfit ResetData which offers immersion cooling and modifies Dell equipment – with the hardware giant’s approval so it stays under warranty.

ResetData CTO Karl Kloppenborg told us that in his opinion two major multinational oil companies “have a fairly solid control on dielectrics.”

“I wouldn't say there's a huge supply chain issue with that,” he added. “We've been getting plenty of liquid.”

Plenty more liquid will be needed across the industry in coming years.

Another panelist at APRICOT today, Billy Lee Kok Chi of datacenter operator and management services firm CSF Advisers, said that in 2021 the company was asked to work on facilities that occupied 1.6 acres, 21.5-megawatt energy budgets, and assumed each rack would consume up to 20 kilowatts.

He said recent jobs have required thousand-megawatt energy budgets for datacenters that sprawl across over 600 acres, almost half of which is occupied by a solar energy farm. A reservoir to store water is also needed, as is a dedicated voltage switchyard.

He wouldn’t reveal the per-rack energy consumption needed in such datacenters, which he said require “X00” kilowatts – a number greater than the 180kw/rack CSF was asked to consider in 2024 – and that even racks dedicated to switching can now consume 35 kilowatts.

Chi said immersion cooling will have a role to play, and that dielectric liquids remain viable for up to a decade – making them a cost-effective choice for datacenter operators. ®