Harmonizing Open Compute Infrastructure with Global Standards

Author: Dr. Kelley Mullick, CEO & Co-founder, Avayla Consulting Group; Peter Morgan, Senior Program Manager, Southwest Research Institute Collection: 2026-OCP-EMEA-Summit-Cooling-Environments-And-Liquid-Cooling

Summary

This presentation reports on the activities of the OCP Cooling Environments Industry Liaison Team — the group responsible for bridging OCP's liquid cooling technical work with the external standards ecosystem. Dr. Kelley Mullick (Avayla Consulting Group) chairs the team; Maryam Mohagheghi (HF Sinclair) is her co-chair; Peter Morgan (Southwest Research Institute) presents on behalf of the Data Center Immersion Fluids Consortium (DCIF.swri.org). The team engages five major standards bodies: UL (Underwriters Laboratories), ASTM International, IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission), IEEE, and ASHRAE, plus Southwest Research Institute as an independent test/R&D partner.

The team's strategic role is two-way communication: bringing community feedback from OCP's five Cooling Environments sub-projects (Cold Plate, Immersion, CDU, Door Heat Exchanger, Heat Reuse) to the standards bodies, and bringing standards updates back to the OCP community. This model is described as essential for accelerating safe and effective deployment of liquid cooling technologies — a point reinforced by the observation at the EMEA Summit that new AI data centers are sometimes sitting dormant because products cannot be insured or certified while awaiting standards-based testing.

Key outputs reported: (1) ASTM formally established a new subcommittee D27.04 to address insulating liquids for immersion cooling applications, with Griffin Burk named chair-designate; next meeting slated June 3–4 in Dallas, TX. (2) OCP and ASHRAE signed a formal MOU for collaboration, with Matt Kokal as the new OCP–ASHRAE liaison (former TC9.9 chair); active work on DLC flow velocity standards and a new CDU working group. (3) Southwest Research Institute launched the Data Center Immersion Fluids Consortium (DCIF), a funded research organization that dedicates a minimum 30% of its funded research to OCP community topics, covers topics including signal integrity, material compatibility, heat transfer, fluid aging, and safety testing for immersion fluids, and serves as an independent nonprofit test house for OCP members.