World’s Largest Two-Phase Immersion Cooling Project
In the Republic of Georgia, a world record in data processing infrastructure is about to be broken, using a specialized fluid developed by American Midwest juggernaut 3M. Headed by BitFury Group and designed and built by Hong Kong engineering company Allied Control, a new data center is using 3M Novec 7100 fluid as part of the largest two-phase immersion cooling (also known as 2PIC) project in the world.
Two-phase immersion cooling is essentially a type of advanced heat regulation for electronic hardware components, touted as being 4000 times more efficient at removing heat than regular air. Its popularity as a temperature control solution has grown in recent years, helping major data centers process information more efficiently without overheating. The 3M Novec 7100 fluid that will be employed in this particular project has a low boiling point of 164°F, which means that as the server system heats up, the specialized fluid will boil, taking heat away from the electronic components as its phase changes from liquid to gas. This vapor then re-condenses on a water-cooled coil and drips back down into the cooling system’s tank, ready to boil and remove heat once more. Because of the way this particular fluid and system exploit the laws of nature to cool the hardware with minimal fluid loss, the 2PIC process can lead to a remarkable 95% savings in cooling energy spent. In the last five years, similar 3M-developed fluids have been used in a wide variety of server cooling applications, and have been highly praised for their energy efficiency, eventually reaching best-in-class status in the industry.
“The PUE we’ve achieved leads us to the next level of data center cooling for high performance computing,” said Valery Vavilov, BitFury CEO. “We’ve taken many steps to optimize our infrastructure for securing the blockchain and blockchain transaction processing that have led us to many different technological innovations. These experiences and technologies could be useful for next generation data center constructions of high performance computing and supercomputing.”
The specific 2PIC process being used in this case was first developed by Allied Control, who was recently bought by BitFury, a top transaction processing company that is well-known for providing infrastructure for a digital currency known as Bitcoin. Because BitFury has a strong focus on renewable energy, environmental responsibility and keeping a relatively small carbon footprint, this particular cooling process–which should be efficient enough lower both energy usage and operating costs–is an ideal choice for the eco-friendly company.


