[Courtesy of SK Lubricants]
SEOUL -- SK Lubricants, the lube-making wing of South Korea's SK Group, has made an equity investment of $25 million in GRC, an American liquid immersion cooling solution provider for data centers. The investment is aimed at accelerating SK Lubricant’s liquid-based thermal management business in the rapidly growing liquid immersion cooling market.
Liquid immersion cooling delivers high cooling efficiency to data center servers by immersing them in high-performance non-conductive coolants. Compared with chilled air-cooling, liquid immersion cooling can lower total data center power usage by 30 percent, dramatically reducing power usage.
SK Lubricants and GRC will jointly develop high-grade single phase immersion coolants and liquid immersion cooling systems for data centers. They will work together to increase their presence and dominance in the market. SK Lubricants said it would seek to use premium base oil as a premium single-phase immersion coolant to substantially grow its thermal management line of business and become a liquid-based thermal management solution provider.
"I believe this equity investment in GRC will maximize cooperation between the two companies and help us be the first mover in the market while helping us grow into a liquid-based thermal management solution provider and accelerating the execution of our financial story in the long term," SK Lubricants CEO Cha Gyu-tak said in a statement on March 30.
Fluids suitable for immersion cooling have very good insulating properties to ensure that they can safely come into contact with energized electronic components. GRC is a pioneer in the data center liquid immersion cooling field. "The investment will also help GRC contribute to a more sustainable data center environment while having a positive impact on the bottom line," GRC CEO Peter Poulin was quoted as saying.