[Tech Report] The Transformation of 'Lubricants' Cooling Hot Batteries

Cooling Utilization with Insulating Liquid

SK Enmove recently partnered with SK Telecom and UK precision liquid cooling company Iceotope to collaborate in the next-generation cooling field. They are promoting a plan to integrate SK Enmove's cooling fluids into Iceotope's liquid cooling solutions and apply them to SK Telecom's AI data center testbed.

The core of liquid cooling is lubricating base oil. Oil companies, criticized for carbon emissions, are the producers. Companies like Shell and ExxonMobil have commercialized immersion cooling products.

Especially with the advent of the artificial intelligence (AI) era, lubricating base oils are gaining more attention. This is because their non-conductive properties can be used to cool electronic devices that generate a lot of heat. In South Korea, besides SK Enmove, GS Caltex has entered the business by launching the first lubricating oil product dedicated to immersion cooling.

SK Enmove conducted a demonstration of the immersion cooling business with SK Telecom last November at the SK Telecom Incheon building. SK Telecom employees inspecting the immersion cooling system Photo by SK Telecom staff

Immersion cooling is a technology that cools objects that continuously generate heat, such as data servers or batteries, by using insulating liquids. It is expected that applying immersion cooling to increasingly advanced data centers, as well as energy storage systems (ESS) and electric vehicles, will deliver excellent cooling performance with low power consumption.

Data centers use about 40% of their total power consumption for cooling to prevent server overheating. Existing air-cooling facilities, which circulate air to reduce heat, require not only power consumption but also the installation and operation of air conditioning equipment. However, they have many drawbacks such as space constraints and fire risks.

The solution that can address all these drawbacks is immersion cooling. SK Enmove utilizes ‘cooling fluids’ based on high-quality lubricating base oils.

SK Enmove conducted a demonstration of the immersion cooling business with SK Telecom last November at the SK Telecom Incheon building. SK Telecom employees inspecting the immersion cooling system
[Photo by Yonhap News]

Lubricating base oils are classified from Group 1 to Group 5 based on viscosity, viscosity index, sulfur content, etc., with higher numbers indicating higher quality. It is reported that only three companies worldwide, including SK Enmove, global oil majors Shell, and the UAE state-owned oil company ADNOC, can produce ‘Group 3+’ oils, which are Group 3 or higher.

In 2022, SK Enmove invested $25 million (approximately 34 billion KRW) in the US immersion cooling solution specialist GRC, becoming the second-largest shareholder and cooperating in technology development. Last year, they signed a business agreement with US IT company Dell Technologies to commercialize immersion cooling technology.

In November last year, a demonstration was conducted at SK Telecom’s Incheon building using SK Enmove’s insulating solution and GRC’s equipment, reducing cooling power by over 90% compared to existing air cooling and improving total data center power consumption by more than 30%.

SK Enmove is also promoting a precision liquid cooling (PLC) business that circulates cooling fluids within racks stacked in a drawer-type structure, as well as tank-type solutions where servers are directly immersed in tanks containing cooling fluids.

The immersion cooling market is expected to grow very rapidly. SK Enmove estimates, through joint research with major research institutions, that the related market will expand from less than 1 trillion KRW in 2020 to 42 trillion KRW by 2040.