Advancing Immersion Cooling: Project Updates, Industry Trends and Consensus Glossary

Author: Rol Prink, Promersion Consulting (OCP Immersion Project Lead); John Bean, CTO, Green Revolution Cooling; Rich Lappenbusch Collection: 2023 Global Summit - Cooling Environments

Summary

This session opened the immersion cooling track at OCP Global Summit 2023 with the largest-ever immersion content program at OCP — approximately 50 topics across a full day. Rol Prink and John Bean jointly presented three areas: (1) an OCP Immersion Project organizational overview, (2) industry market analysis and trends, and (3) the launch of a consensus glossary for immersion cooling warranty terminology.

On project organization, the OCP Immersion Project is described as the largest project in Open Compute at time of presentation, with a structured workstream incubation process: challenges identified by the Immersion Hurdles Workstream are triaged into workstream requirements documents, assigned leaders, onboarded, and driven to collateral (white papers, base specs). Active workstreams cover materials compatibility, TCO, power distribution, challenges/hurdles, signal integrity, fluid specifications, heat reuse, and more.

On market data, Prink presented enriched meta-analysis data from Promersion showing 2023 global immersion technology revenue at $0.5B (50% of the total $1B liquid cooling market, though dominated by revenue value rather than unit volume). Growth trajectory: $20M (2019) → $60M (2020) → $130M (2021) → $320M (2022) → $550M (2023). Forecasted CAGR of 40% through 2030 puts the market at $6B; a high-volatility scenario at 62% CAGR reaches $16B. Key barrier: standardization, transparency on TCO, and reliability data.

The consensus glossary addresses the discovery that warranty language in immersion cooling is inconsistent and lacks generally accepted terms — causing confusion during procurement. A 9-level taxonomy was proposed (Material → Component → Board → System → Rack/Tank → Row → Room → Hall) applicable to both air-cooled and liquid-cooled architectures, and the glossary was framed as a precondition for harmonized warranty frameworks across the industry.