As concerns over heat generation at artificial intelligence (AI) data centers continue to grow, the refining industry is fully entering the “immersion cooling oil” market. As the performance of graphics processing units (GPUs) installed in AI data centers increases, the associated heat generation issue is worsening, and immersion cooling is gaining attention as an alternative to supplement existing cooling methods.

According to industry sources on the 6th, as the density of high-performance GPU servers in AI data centers has recently increased, the limitations of “air cooling,” which uses air to dissipate heat, have become apparent. Conventional air-cooled data centers consume about 30–40% of their total power usage on cooling alone, creating a heavy power burden. Against this backdrop, “immersion cooling,” in which entire servers are directly submerged in non-conductive insulating cooling oil to dissipate heat, is emerging as an alternative that can remove heat more efficiently with less power and cost than air cooling.

Global market research firm Fortune Business Insights forecasts that the data center immersion cooling market will expand from USD 287.29 million (approximately KRW 387.7 billion) in 2025 to USD 1.69411 billion (approximately KRW 2.2862 trillion) by 2034, growing at an annual rate of 21.9%.

Domestic refiners have also begun in earnest to develop and demonstrate immersion cooling oils tailored to specific applications. The ability to leverage existing technological capabilities is an additional advantage. Because immersion cooling oils are produced by adding special additives to base oils that Korean refiners already manufacture, they can develop high value-added functional products with relatively low research and development (R&D) costs.

S-Oil announced on the 3rd of this month that it will promote the demonstration of immersion cooling technology for AI data centers in cooperation with KTNF, a domestic server developer, and Global Standard Technology (GST), an immersion cooling equipment company. The plan is to conduct full-scale testing in actual data centers or similar environments.

SK Enmove, which is in charge of the lubricants business within the SK Group, entered this market in 2022 by investing in U.S.-based immersion cooling specialist GRC. After applying immersion cooling oil to SK Telecom’s data center in 2023, the company has recently been developing and demonstrating immersion cooling solutions with LG Electronics and GRC.

GS Caltex is supplying immersion cooling oil to a demonstration demo room at LG Uplus’s Pyeongchon 2 Center, and HD Hyundai Oilbank also began demonstration in November last year by introducing an immersion cooling system to an AI data center on the Seoul National University campus in collaboration with the university.

While accelerating the commercialization of immersion cooling oil for data centers, refiners are also developing immersion cooling oils for batteries, which carry a high fire risk. Lithium batteries used in energy storage systems (ESS), often referred to as large industrial backup batteries, and in EVs can experience “thermal runaway,” a rapid temperature rise triggered by a chain reaction of heat generation once internal temperature exceeds a certain threshold. Heat management is therefore directly linked to fire prevention.

SK Enmove previously developed an immersion cooling product for ESS in partnership with Hanwha Aerospace and has been mass-producing it for marine applications. The company now plans to extend this to EVs, going through development stages over the next two years with a view to commercialization. S-Oil has recently developed and is selling a “high flash point” immersion cooling oil product for batteries, with a flash point above 250 degrees Celsius.

Popular News