Shell Liquid Cooling Fluids: Improving efficiency in high-performance computing
Discover how Shell’s innovative Liquid Cooling Fluids can help data centres and other facilities meet the growing demands of artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing while achieving their operational and environmental goals.
What are liquid cooling fluids?
Liquid cooling fluids are an efficient way to absorb and dissipate the heat generated by electronic components – especially those used in computers and data centre hardware.
Immersion cooling fluids are dielectric, which means they do not conduct electricity and do not corrode the equipment, making it safe to submerge electrical equipment in them.
Solutions
Direct-to-chip cooling
Often used in data centres to cool high-performance components like central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs), direct-to-chip cooling is as its name suggests. It delivers fluid to a cold plate heat exchanger placed on the component, allowing it to pass directly by the heat source. This makes the extraction of heat more efficient2, helping to handle the heat output of components such as the high-density GPU clusters used in AI systems.
Precision cooling
Precision cooling systems extract heat from specific areas of equipment, making sure critical (and heat-intensive) components get the cooling they need to operate at peak performance. Using a controlled flow of cooling fluid, these systems can maintain a stable temperature for components while reducing the consumption resources like water and energy2 – helping facilities to operate more efficiently and more sustainably2.
Immersion cooling
Full immersion cooling – also known as rack-based immersion cooling – involves immersing elements such as entire servers or networking equipment in non-conductive cooling fluid. The fluid then absorbs and dissipates the heat from all components. This can be effective for the high-density equipment used in data centres and high-performance computing operations and is highly scalable – with the ability to retrofit it within existing infrastructure.
Benefits of Liquid Immersion Cooling Fluids
Better performance
By transferring heat more efficiently than many air-cooling techniques (which use refrigerated air, fans and heatsinks), immersion cooling fluids can support overclocking and increase CPU speeds by up to 40%.1
More efficient operations
With no need for coolers, chillers, fans or evaporative cooling systems, immersion cooling fluids can help businesses cut the floor space needed to host their computing equipment by up to 80%.1
Greater energy efficiency
Immersion cooling fluids almost eliminate the need for the power-hungry air-based cooling systems, helping to reduce the energy footprint of a computing facility by up to 48.1
Increased profitability
By reducing electricity consumption and the need for intricate heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, immersion cooling fluids can reduce a data centre’s total cost of ownership (TCO) by up to 33%.1
Easier to scale
As data centres expand to meet the growing demands of high-end computing, immersion cooling fluids offer an easier way to add scale and enable increased locational flexibility.
Improved sustainability
Providing greater operational and energy efficiency, immersion cooling fluids help businesses to achieve their sustainability goals – contributing to CO2 emissions reductions of up to 30%.1
Immersion vs. air cooling
Traditionally, facilities like data centres have relied on air-based cooling systems that require extensive equipment like fans and heatsinks to provide cool air – equipment that reduces operational efficiency through its need for additional space and high energy consumption.
Immersion cooling technology offers a completely different approach. Circulating specially formulated cooling fluids around the equipment, it dissipates heat effectively. This contributes to improved equipment performance through better temperature regulation while providing greater operational and energy efficiency.
Read whitepaper
What is immersion cooling fluid and why should you pay attention?
Become immersed in the world of liquid cooling, with a whitepaper that explores exactly what immersion cooling is and why it matters.
Covering different techniques and approaches, a detailed look at how it all works and the benefits of using liquid immersion cooling (operational and environmental), it provides a comprehensive look at why businesses should adopt the technology.
Discover more about why immersion cooling offers an effective way to manage the rapidly increasing computing needs of AI and other high-performance computing functions.
Watch videos
What are the key benefits of immersion cooling?
See how Shell is using immersion cooling
Read case study
High-performance computing
Shell Immersion Cooling Fluids enable sustainable data centre upgrade.
What’s new
An industry first
Shell Immersion Cooling Fluids are now certified by Intel for use with 4th Gen and 5th Gen Intel Xeon processors in data centres worldwide.
Working together to lower the carbon footprint of big data
Intel, Submer and Shell are collaborating to advance immersion cooling technology.
Paving the way
Shell IT deploys immersion-cooled HPC cluster within its Houston data center, with help from AMD and Penguin.
Advancing immersion cooling with our partner Asperitas
Delivering an energy efficient HPC cluster upgrade in Amsterdam.
Future of Sustainable Data Centers
Penguin Solutions, NVIDIA, and Shell Case Study.
Featured collaborations
GRC
GRC Welcomes Shell as First Official Member of ElectroSafe Fluid Partner Program for Data Center Immersion Cooling.
Asperitas
Shell successfully provides an infrastructure upgrade for an energy efficient, scalable and future ready High Performance Computing (HPC)cluster in a T-Systems managed Amsterdam datacentre.
Iceotope
Shell is an Iceotope Approved Fluid Vendor, ensuring its fluids meet rigorous standards to provide customers with proven reliability, safety, and optimal performance in liquid cooling.
BAC
Shell fluids are helping BAC deliver future-proof industrial immersion cooling solutions, at any scale. Solving the cooling challenges of modern, power-hungry CPUs and GPUs efficiently.
CoolBlock
Coolblock, together with Shell, proudly delivers next-gen immersion cooling products for energy-efficient, scalable data centers—reducing costs, environmental footprint, and driving high-performance computing.
Submer
Shell has partnered with Submer creating a top-class group of collaborators with extensive reach and resources, working towards more sustainable services.
Disclaimers:
1 Figures based on: Global immersion cooling market in data centres – growth, trends and forecast (2019–2024) report (Mordor Intelligence) and Shell’s internal evaluations. Benefits achieved will vary according to actual site development.
2 Than conventional methods such as coolers, chillers evaporative coolers, fans and bearings.
