Shell to offer 'cooling fluid' for data centers

SINGAPORE – Multinational energy giant Shell is currently piloting its innovative ‘immersion cooling fluid’ that it would be offering to data centers as coolant for their servers and other computing tools.

In a roundtable discussion with Asian journalists here, Shell Executive Vice President for Global Lubricants Jason Wong indicated that the ‘immersion cooling liquid’ of the company for data centers is now being piloted at Microsoft; then at Alibaba in China; and when the product will already be rolled out for widespread commercial use, it will also be offered in the Asian market – including to data centers in the Philippines.

“We are confident that it works, but we actually have to do this pilot for the data centers to have confidence to the marketplace to say… hey, this is working! Now, we are already having some breakthroughs with some of the data center companies,” he stressed.

Wong explained that when the immersion cooling fluid of Shell will be used in data centers, it circulates by natural convection or is pumped around to remove heat from the components, “so you’re absorbing the heat; and effectively, this is something that you are not making emissions.”

It was emphasized that ‘cooling’ will be highly critical in the operation of data centers; because if their computer servers will overheat because of gigantic data being processed in their networks, this could lead to unwanted outages in their operations.

The Shell executive noted in utilizing liquid coolant for data centers, the mindset change that has to be taken into account is the contact that will be happening with the machines, “so when you have fluids surrounding them (machines), you have to make sure that there would be no negative impact and it (cooling fluid) is compatible.”

He highlighted that when their coolant for data centers would already gain traction as an alternative solution, “the growth will be exponential, but it is very important that we can actually give confidence in that solution.”

Shell conveyed “full immersion in a thermally conductive, electrically non-conductive (dielectric) coolant is a highly efficient way to keep computer components cool.”

In addition, the company’s cooling fluid can help data centers “cut energy consumption massively and lower carbon dioxide emissions, while reducing costs and increasing location flexibility.”

To date, the incursion of big data and cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, media streaming along with other high performance computing across businesses and in the daily lives of global populations have been swamping information technology (IT) processes at data centers, hence, there is also a need for higher scale solutions for their cooling needs.

Many data centers are currently depending largely on ‘air cooling’ for their servers; but several innovations are coming to fore as alternatives – including cooling liquids, water cooling as well as in-row cooling.

The Philippines is among the countries in the Southeast Asian region that has major ambition to become a ‘data center hub’, thus, industry players are endlessly searching for solutions that can keep their operations fully reliable and efficient; while also reducing their carbon footprints as well as costs.