Immersion cooling
Technique of submerging servers in a non-conductive dielectric fluid to dissipate heat.
Immersion cooling submerges servers in a bath of non-conductive dielectric fluid, which absorbs heat through direct contact with all components. More radical than direct-to-chip liquid cooling, it offers even greater thermal dissipation and sharply reduces fan consumption, improving PUE. The process exists in single-phase immersion, where the fluid stays liquid, and two-phase, where the fluid evaporates then condenses. For insurance, immersion creates an atypical risk profile: dielectric fluids are costly, sometimes subject to environmental constraints, and their degradation or leakage raises pollution and maintenance questions. The absence of loss history on these still-rare installations makes pricing uncertain, while the concentration of value in a single bath amplifies exposure should the thermal control system fail.
Hypothetical case: a data center cooled by two-phase immersion concentrates high value in baths of dielectric fluid whose replacement cost weighs on the risk assessment.
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