CASTROL
The facility serves as both a research and development centre and a demonstration site where customers can witness immersion cooling in action. This hands-on approach helps Castrol to address concerns about the new technology.
Sung explains:“ Not a lot of companies have a facility like this. It really sets us apart from our competitors because we can do the co-engineering and joint development with all these strategic partners and customers.”
The facility is also designed to support the company’ s co-engineering philosophy. Chris adds:“ We’ re not a company that makes a fluid, gives it to someone who’ s going to use it, and says‘ let us know how it works.’ We very much like to co-engineer. That’ s always been part of Castrol’ s DNA. We’ ve done that historically with car manufacturers and now with data centre companies and server manufacturers.”
Nick adds:“ As new technologies come along, it’ s really important to find partners that you can collaborate with, to get access to the latest and greatest equipment.
“ Co-engineering means we can quantify and qualify our fluids with the latest and greatest equipment, but also work together to find out really in depth about how it’ s working, why it’ s working, or maybe why it doesn’ t work.”
This collaborative approach to product development enables Castrol to refine its fluids based on real-world testing and feedback. It means that the company can
“ What also makes us a leader is the fact that we’ re already quite active in cooling”
STEPHEN ZHAO, THERMAL MANAGEMENT DIRECTOR FOR EMEA, CASTROL
identify potential issues before they affect customer deployments.
Austin explains how partners like Unicom are a critical part of this validation process:“ Validation is critical because we are designing and selling fully warranted, certified solutions. These have to work for years. You can’ t just take individual building blocks, put them together and assume they’ re going to work.”
Moving beyond energy efficiency While energy efficiency is a primary driver for immersion cooling adoption, the technology is also able to offer additional benefits that align with broader environmental goals in the data centre industry.
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