Immersion Cooling vs Air Cooling: The Numbers Behind the Revolution
The Data Centre Cooling Crisis
As AI workloads grow exponentially, traditional air-cooled data centres are hitting fundamental physical limits. GPU chips now generate up to 700W of heat each, and the energy required to cool them with air is becoming unsustainable.
The Numbers Tell the Story
| Metric | Air Cooling | AIGB Immersion |
|---|---|---|
| PUE | 1.50 – 2.00 | 1.03 – 1.15 |
| Water Usage | 1–2 L/kWh | Zero |
| Space Required | Standard | 65% Less |
| Heat Reuse | Low (~5%) | ~100% |
| Noise | High (80+ dB) | Silent |
| Energy Savings | Baseline | Up to 50% |
How Single-Phase Immersion Cooling Works
Our approach is elegantly simple: servers are fully submerged in a tank of 100% biodegradable dielectric fluid. This fluid:
- Absorbs heat directly from all components simultaneously
- Circulates naturally through convection (no pumps needed for basic cooling)
- Transfers heat to a secondary loop for district heating reuse
- Eliminates hot spots that cause hardware failures in air-cooled systems
The Environmental Impact
For a typical 1MW deployment:
- Energy saved: ~500 MWh per year (enough to power 150 homes)
- Water saved: ~2 million litres per year
- CO₂ reduced: ~200 tonnes per year
- Heat reused: Enough to heat ~100 apartments
Why We Chose Single-Phase
There are two main approaches to immersion cooling: single-phase and two-phase. We chose single-phase because:
- Simpler maintenance — no phase-change management required
- Lower cost — the dielectric fluid is more affordable and 100% biodegradable
- Proven reliability — we've been running immersion cooling for 5 years
- Easier scaling — standardised tank designs that can be deployed anywhere
The Future of Data Centre Cooling
As GPU power consumption continues to rise, immersion cooling isn't just a nice-to-have — it's becoming a necessity. The data centres of 2030 will look fundamentally different from those of today, and immersion cooling will be at the heart of that transformation.