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Title: Immersion Cooling in Data Centers: A Comprehensive Review of Benefits, Challenges, and Future Directions
Immersion cooling has emerged as a promising solution for the escalating thermal management challenges in the contemporary and modern (next generation) data centers, where traditional air-cooling systems are increasingly inadequate due to rising power densities in microprocessors. The evolution of immersion cooling technologies, highlighting their benefits and the challenges associated with their implementation, is explored in this review. Two-phase microchannel cooling has often been cited as a highly efficient alternative, which can help achieve significant energy savings over air cooling. Subsequent studies have expanded on methods like refrigerant touch cooling, thermosiphon systems, and geothermal immersion cooling. All these strategies can help achieve enhanced energy efficiency, reduced operational costs, and improved Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE). Immersion cooling has been demonstrated to support denser CPU packaging and meet the demands of high-performance computing environments. Despite these advantages, challenges persist, including the need for specialized infrastructure, potential risks related to liquid handling, and integration with existing systems. Advances in environmentally friendly cooling fluids and optimized airflow management have begun to mitigate some of these issues. To fully realize the potential of immersion cooling, future research endeavors should focus on developing standardized protocols and best practices to facilitate its widespread adoption. Enhancing the compatibility of cooling fluids with a broader range of hardware components will be crucial, as will designing systems that are easier to integrate with existing data center infrastructure. Exploring hybrid cooling solutions that combine immersion cooling with other efficient methods could offer additional benefits. Further investigation into the long-term reliability, maintenance requirements, and environmental impacts of immersion-cooled systems is essential. Integrating immersion cooling with renewable energy sources and waste heat recovery systems could also enhance sustainability and operational efficiency (e.g., for thermal desalination and wood drying applications). The literature reports can be utilized to identify a clear trend toward adopting immersion cooling as a key strategy for improving energy efficiency and thermal management in data centers. Hence, ongoing research and development efforts need to be redirected to overcoming these remaining obstacles, thus paving the way for more energy efficient data center operations with reduced footprint for water and power consumption in the future; while also improving the sustainability, reliability, robustness, and resilience of these platforms.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2401943
PAR ID:
10654765
Author(s) / Creator(s):
;
Publisher / Repository:
Begellhouse
Date Published:
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1513 to 1533
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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