By Christie U. Omonigho
Shell Lubricants’ (“Shell”) says its immersion cooling fluids have become the first to receive official certification from a major chip manufacturer, allowing its innovative products to be used with confidence in data centres worldwide, report from Shell London revealed.
Jason Wong, Global Executive Vice President, Shell Lubricants, said: “Upgrading existing air-cooling methods with immersion fluids can reduce data centre energy use by up to 48%, as well as help reduce capital and operating expenditure by up to 33%1.”
“We have been working with Intel for the last two years to certify our immersion cooling fluids, which have the potential to transform the way that data centres are cooled and how much energy they use.”
Energy Window International (Media) learnt that Intel embarked on an extensive testing that showed that Intel Xeon processors remain as reliable with Shell’s immersion cooling fluids as with traditional air-cooled systems.
Explaining Shell said that immersion cooling would involve servers and networking equipment being placed in electrically non-conductive fluid. Specialized liquid according to Shell absorbs and dissipates heat from IT equipment more than one thousand times more efficiently than air-cooling.
“With no need for coolers, chillers, fans or evaporative cooling systems, immersion cooling fluids can cut the floor space needed for a data centre by up to 80%” Shell said.
“We’re pleased to be partnering with Shell in accelerating the adoption of more sustainable and energy-efficient solutions for data centres,” says Karin Eibschitz Segal, corporate vice president and interim general manager of the Data Centre Group at Intel. “Through these advancements we’re paving the way for the next generation of high-performance, environmentally conscious computing.”
The Royal Dutch Shell quoted the International Energy Agency as saying that energy consumption from data centres, at the moment, accounts for 1.5% of global electricity demand, with the expectation that it would double from 415 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2024 to around 945 TWh by 2030. This Shell said would mainly be driven by the growth in Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Shell maintains that conventional cooling systems typically account for around 30-40%4 of a data centre’s energy demand. Noting that its immersion cooling fluids can be retrofitted to existing data centres, as well as allowing new data centres to use space more efficiently.
Adding that as the world’s top lubricants supplier, it is investing in new products such as fluids for electric cars, battery storage systems and data centres, insisting that its focus aligns with Shell’s strategy to grow sales of premium and high value products while helping its customers meet their own emission reduction goals.