Castrol Offers a Fluid Fix for AI’s Overheating Data Centers
The data center industry’s cooling crisis has a surprising champion: a century-old British lubricants manufacturer better known for what’s under the hood of your car than what’s inside your server rack. My recent conversation with Darren Burgess, PhD, Business Development Director for Castrol, and Solidigm’s Jeniece Wnorowski revealed how the company is leveraging decades of fluid expertise to address one of AI infrastructure’s most pressing challenges.
The Physics of AI Demand Liquid Cooling
The transition to liquid cooling isn’t a preference but a necessity driven by the thermal characteristics of modern AI chipsets. As Darren explained, “The chipsets are just too hot to be cooled by air. Basically, if you want to try to do air cooling, the servers would need to be so separated you’d probably only get a couple of servers per rack in order to rush enough air through.” Given the premium on data center real estate and power, that approach obviously doesn’t scale.
Direct-to-chip cooling addresses this constraint by placing cold plates (essentially heat exchangers) directly against the chipsets generating the most heat. A propylene glycol solution circulates through these cold plates, drawing heat away from the processors and enabling the server densification that AI deployments demand. This approach allows operators to maximize their infrastructure investment while maintaining the vertical rack configurations they’re already familiar with.
The Chemistry Behind the Cooling
What appears straightforward on the surface reveals significant complexity once you examine the chemistry involved. The coolant used is PG25, which contains 25% propylene glycol and 75% water. This immediately raises concerns about corrosion in systems featuring copper cold plates, iron components, and various other metals throughout the cooling distribution infrastructure.
This is where Castrol’s differentiation emerges. The critical factor isn’t the base fluid itself. “The additive pack is sort of the ‘magic dust,’ which is really where the action is,” Darren explained. It protects against corrosion while maintaining cooling efficiency. If corrosion occurs, particulates can clog the narrow channels within cold plates, some measuring as small as 50 to 100 microns. The result would be degraded cooling performance or complete system failure, forcing expensive downtime to remedy the problem.
Castrol’s expertise lies in formulating additive packages that prevent these failure modes, drawing on the same chemical engineering knowledge they’ve applied to automotive lubricants for decades. The qualification process requires demonstrating that cooling fluids won’t corrode system components, an essential step before any deployment.
The Single Point of Failure
Darren offered a compelling analogy to illustrate the cooling fluid’s critical role in data center infrastructure. While operators can deploy redundant cooling distribution units, backup pumps, and duplicate systems throughout the infrastructure stack, the cooling fluid itself represents a single point of failure. “It’s really like the blood,” he said. “We have two eyes, hands, and feet. We can get away with a lot of repeat, but we only have one system of blood. You really have to take care of it or you’ll shut the body down, or the data center down.”
This reality positions fluid health and maintenance as crucial operational concerns. Castrol’s value proposition extends beyond simply supplying cooling liquids to encompassing the entire lifecycle: proper installation to avoid contamination, ongoing maintenance to preserve fluid integrity, and eventual disposal when systems are decommissioned.
Rapid Market Evolution
The liquid cooling market’s maturation has accelerated dramatically over the past year. Hyperscalers including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Google have moved beyond pilot programs to large-scale deployments of direct-to-chip cooling. The conversation has shifted from questions about equipment availability to detailed technical discussions about additive packages, compatibility testing, and failure mode analysis.
This evolution reflects the industry’s growing confidence in liquid cooling as a proven technology rather than an experimental approach. Organizations are now focused on operational details: understanding how fluids interact with different materials, identifying potential points of failure before they occur in production, and standardizing deployment practices across the industry.
The TechArena Take
Castrol’s pivot from automotive lubricants to data center cooling solutions demonstrates how adjacent industry expertise can address emerging infrastructure challenges. Their experience formulating fluids for demanding thermal environments translates directly to the requirements of AI infrastructure.
As liquid cooling transitions from niche technology to mainstream deployment, organizations that partner with suppliers offering comprehensive lifecycle management, from installation through maintenance to disposal, will be better positioned to avoid costly downtime and operational disruptions. The cooling fluid may be invisible to end users, but it’s becoming as foundational to AI infrastructure as the silicon it protects.
For more information about Castrol’s data center cooling solutions, visit https://www.castrol.com/en/global/corporate/products/data-centre-and-it-cooling.html.
The data center industry’s cooling crisis has a surprising champion: a century-old British lubricants manufacturer better known for what’s under the hood of your car than what’s inside your server rack. My recent conversation with Darren Burgess, PhD, Business Development Director for Castrol, and Solidigm’s Jeniece Wnorowski revealed how the company is leveraging decades of fluid expertise to address one of AI infrastructure’s most pressing challenges.
The Physics of AI Demand Liquid Cooling
The transition to liquid cooling isn’t a preference but a necessity driven by the thermal characteristics of modern AI chipsets. As Darren explained, “The chipsets are just too hot to be cooled by air. Basically, if you want to try to do air cooling, the servers would need to be so separated you’d probably only get a couple of servers per rack in order to rush enough air through.” Given the premium on data center real estate and power, that approach obviously doesn’t scale.
Direct-to-chip cooling addresses this constraint by placing cold plates (essentially heat exchangers) directly against the chipsets generating the most heat. A propylene glycol solution circulates through these cold plates, drawing heat away from the processors and enabling the server densification that AI deployments demand. This approach allows operators to maximize their infrastructure investment while maintaining the vertical rack configurations they’re already familiar with.
The Chemistry Behind the Cooling
What appears straightforward on the surface reveals significant complexity once you examine the chemistry involved. The coolant used is PG25, which contains 25% propylene glycol and 75% water. This immediately raises concerns about corrosion in systems featuring copper cold plates, iron components, and various other metals throughout the cooling distribution infrastructure.
This is where Castrol’s differentiation emerges. The critical factor isn’t the base fluid itself. “The additive pack is sort of the ‘magic dust,’ which is really where the action is,” Darren explained. It protects against corrosion while maintaining cooling efficiency. If corrosion occurs, particulates can clog the narrow channels within cold plates, some measuring as small as 50 to 100 microns. The result would be degraded cooling performance or complete system failure, forcing expensive downtime to remedy the problem.
Castrol’s expertise lies in formulating additive packages that prevent these failure modes, drawing on the same chemical engineering knowledge they’ve applied to automotive lubricants for decades. The qualification process requires demonstrating that cooling fluids won’t corrode system components, an essential step before any deployment.
The Single Point of Failure
Darren offered a compelling analogy to illustrate the cooling fluid’s critical role in data center infrastructure. While operators can deploy redundant cooling distribution units, backup pumps, and duplicate systems throughout the infrastructure stack, the cooling fluid itself represents a single point of failure. “It’s really like the blood,” he said. “We have two eyes, hands, and feet. We can get away with a lot of repeat, but we only have one system of blood. You really have to take care of it or you’ll shut the body down, or the data center down.”
This reality positions fluid health and maintenance as crucial operational concerns. Castrol’s value proposition extends beyond simply supplying cooling liquids to encompassing the entire lifecycle: proper installation to avoid contamination, ongoing maintenance to preserve fluid integrity, and eventual disposal when systems are decommissioned.
Rapid Market Evolution
The liquid cooling market’s maturation has accelerated dramatically over the past year. Hyperscalers including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Google have moved beyond pilot programs to large-scale deployments of direct-to-chip cooling. The conversation has shifted from questions about equipment availability to detailed technical discussions about additive packages, compatibility testing, and failure mode analysis.
This evolution reflects the industry’s growing confidence in liquid cooling as a proven technology rather than an experimental approach. Organizations are now focused on operational details: understanding how fluids interact with different materials, identifying potential points of failure before they occur in production, and standardizing deployment practices across the industry.
The TechArena Take
Castrol’s pivot from automotive lubricants to data center cooling solutions demonstrates how adjacent industry expertise can address emerging infrastructure challenges. Their experience formulating fluids for demanding thermal environments translates directly to the requirements of AI infrastructure.
As liquid cooling transitions from niche technology to mainstream deployment, organizations that partner with suppliers offering comprehensive lifecycle management, from installation through maintenance to disposal, will be better positioned to avoid costly downtime and operational disruptions. The cooling fluid may be invisible to end users, but it’s becoming as foundational to AI infrastructure as the silicon it protects.
For more information about Castrol’s data center cooling solutions, visit https://www.castrol.com/en/global/corporate/products/data-centre-and-it-cooling.html.
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