Immersion cooling gets boost from Castrol-Submer partnership
Castrol, one of the world’s leading lubricant brands, and Submer, an emerging leader for immersion cooling systems, have signed an agreement aiming to accelerate the adoption of immersion cooling as a path to more efficient and more sustainable data centre operations.
The companies plan to collaborate on the global supply, standardization, and development of next generation immersion cooling fluids, fluids which are used to cool components of IT equipment by submerging computer components in a thermally conductive and dielectric liquid. The servers are cooled as a result and heat is transferred from the source to the liquid.
By combining Castrol’s thermal management expertise with Submer’s expertise in immersion cooling systems, the two organisations aim to achieve a multitude of benefits particularly in allowing data centres to be managed in a more sustainable manner. With immersion cooling, the water usage and the power consumption to operate and cool server equipment can be significantly reduced.
bp, Castrol’s parent company, is also working with companies in key industrial sectors that have significant carbon emissions to manage, to help them to decarbonise by offering integrated energy solutions. This potentially opens additional opportunities for Castrol and Submer to explore integrated coolant and energy offers, tailored to support data centre customers to help them meet their sustainability goals.
Impact of the Castrol and Submer agreement
“At Castrol, we aim to work with our customers to help deliver a more sustainable future as set out in our PATH360 framework, including working with our commercial customers to help them save energy, waste and water. Teaming up with Submer is a great example of how cooperation can help deliver more efficient operations and can bring about many opportunities for us to continue to deliver products that help save energy whilst delivering high-performance with increased efficiency,” said Rebecca Yates, bp’s vice president advanced mobility and industrial products.
“At Submer, our stated mission is to enable sustainable digital infrastructures. There are two key drivers for needing a different medium other than air; there’s a technical need driven by the supporting future generations of high-density chips that can no longer be cooled by traditional means, and a sustainability driver, driven by the need to deliver more sustainable data centers with improved environmental performance. Thanks to immersion cooling we can run these digital infrastructures with considerably reduced energy and space typically required. 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. All this happens thanks to a liquid medium that both Castrol and Submer are experts in,” said Daniel Pope, co-founder and CEO, Submer.
The two organisations see great potential in combining Castrol’s global reach, service capabilities and thermal management expertise with Submer’s technology and know-how, to seek to enable a differentiated offer to better serve customers by providing unique life-cycle and integrated solutions. Both companies have strong sustainability aims and can support the data centre industry on its journey towards achieving more sustainable operations.
