Immersion Reliability Committee Update

Author: Brian Kinkade (FUCHS Lubricants, Component Compatibility co-lead); Betsy Cossette (ExxonMobil, Material Compatibility co-presenter); Overall Reliability Committee lead: Samantha Yates (Intel) Collection: 2025-OCP-EMEA-Summit-Immersion-Cooling

Summary

Brian Kinkade (FUCHS) and Betsy Cossette (ExxonMobil) presented the status of the OCP Immersion Reliability Committee's three active workstreams at OCP EMEA Summit 2025 (Dublin, 29–30 April). The Reliability Committee exists to address the central impediment to widespread immersion cooling adoption that is not addressed by DLC (direct liquid cooling): confidence in server reliability when immersed in dielectric fluid over the multi-year service life of a data center.

The committee's problem framing is a two-way degradation loop: material incompatibilities adversely affect component and supporting material performance (Thermochemical Quality), and immersed materials contaminate the fluid, which then causes component and system degradation through deleterious chemical reactions (Thermochemical Reliability). The three workstreams address different layers of this problem. Material Compatibility (led by Punith Shivaprasad/Shell and Steven Bischof/Chevron Phillips) characterizes bulk materials, plastics, elastomers, adhesives, glues, metals, paints, and anti-corrosion coatings against immersion fluids. Component Compatibility (led by Beau VanVaerenbergh/Oleon and Brian Kinkade/FUCHS) addresses server component testing protocols; its white paper is currently in community review and is nearly complete. Thermochemical Reliability (led by Samantha Yates/Intel and Betsy Cossette/ExxonMobil) is the most nascent workstream, working to define equivalent service lifetime standards, accelerated life testing methodologies, and standardized test plans.

The committee session included a substantive Q&A on fluid contamination: Amy Short (Denvr Dataworks) asked how to reconcile two-and-a-half years of production supercluster operation with changed fluid vs. theoretical contamination risks. The answer from both presenters was that contamination effects are subtle — specific chemical mechanisms like plasticizer migration and solder flux ester-glycol formation leading to electrolyte production are the real risks, not bulk fluid darkening — and that the community's job is to establish contamination thresholds that give operators confidence when monitoring shows values below threshold.