Chemical & Engineering News: Data Centers Take the Plunge
On: August 24, 2025
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Data centers take the plunge
As old-fashioned air cooling reaches its limits, data centers look to immerse their servers in coolants
Key Insights
- Data centers are beginning to switch from air to liquid cooling.
- Liquid cooling is more effective at drawing heat away from sophisticated chips and could save energy.
- The sector will sort out which liquid technology—cold plate or immersion–will prevail in the coming decades.
As anyone who has spilled coffee on a laptop knows, liquids and electronics don’t mix. But as anyone who has sat down with a laptop also knows, they get pretty hot.
The same also applies to computers at much larger scale: data centers. And these installations are getting hotter and hotter as they increasingly run artificial intelligence and mine for cryptocurrency with complex chips. The fans and air conditioners that have traditionally kept them cool will soon no longer cut it.