As data center concerns heat up, Rochester company develops solutions to keep them cool

Inside a lab, Rick Tufty opened a gray metal box filled with circuit boards, wires and other computer parts, all submerged in a bright yellow liquid.

A cardinal rule of electronics is never get them wet. But Tufty said this fluid is dielectric — meaning it doesn’t conduct electricity — and won’t cause any harm.

“But it does transfer heat,” said Tufty, vice president of engineering and chief technology officer at LiquidCool Solutions, based in Rochester. “So it’s kind of special.”

When the company started in 2006, it was mainly in the gaming business, and its founders were looking for ways to keep high-performance gaming systems cool. 

More recently, it’s focused on using liquid to cool powerful computer electronics, like the kind stored in data centers.

“We were anticipating this probably long before a lot of other people were, because we looked at the trends in the industry and where things were going,” said Tufty, who joined the company 15 years ago.

A rise in cloud computing, smart devices, streaming services and artificial intelligence is driving explosive growth of large data centers across the U.S., including Minnesota.

All those computer servers and equipment generate a lot of heat. Most data centers use fans to circulate air to keep them cool. That requires an enormous amount of electricity, raising concerns about whether utilities and the electric grid will be able to keep up.

“The trends in the industry are kind of forcing people to start thinking about things other than just standard air-cooled approaches, because it’s basically not going to be sustainable,” Tufty said.

LiquidCool offers a different solution: putting computer components into enclosed cases, covering them with fluid and loading them into racks. Pumps circulate the liquid to capture and remove the heat. 

The system collects real-time temperature data, and the speed of the pumps can be adjusted to provide the right amount of cooling.

Tufty said LiquidCool’s technology uses 30 to 40 percent less energy than an air cooling system. It keeps electronics at a constant, cooler temperature, which extends their life, he said.

There are other advantages: The liquid system is sealed, so there’s no dust. The fluid doesn’t contain water, so there’s no corrosion. And the heat that’s captured can be reused to heat homes, businesses or for other purposes, Tufty said.

“You could use it for warming up a greenhouse. You could send it to a microbrewery,” he said. “There’s lots of uses for that heat energy once it’s in the form of a warm fluid.”

Despite the benefits of liquid cooling, data centers have been slow to adopt it, likely due to higher initial costs. But as computing power ramps up, they may have no choice.

As servers get more powerful, companies are starting to realize they can’t cool them using standard air systems, said Eric Kozubal, a senior mechanical engineer researcher at the Colorado-based National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

At many data centers, 20 to 40 percent of their total energy is used to cool the servers, Kozubal said. With liquid-cooled systems, that can drop to about 5 percent.

“That’s a significant number,” he said.

One Minnesota company interested in liquid cooling is Vaultas, based in Alexandria. It builds and operates data centers for businesses.

Vaultas’ president, John Unger, said he thinks liquid cooling is a great solution to save energy costs and extend the life expectancy of computer servers. But getting customers to pay higher upfront costs is a challenge, he said, even if it would mean lower electricity bills down the road.

“It’s the thing of getting them to make that upfront investment, to save on the energy,” Unger said. “And until they (felt) their compute demanded it, they resisted.”

Vaultas is partnering with LiquidCool on a new data center in St. Cloud, expected to be completed this summer. The project got $100,000 in funding from Minneapolis-based Grid Catalyst. It helps energy startups bring their innovations to market, including by matching them with companies willing to test their technology, said president Nina Axelson.

“Each time you take a step with an innovation like this, you’re like, ‘OK, we know it works in the lab. We know it works in this limited use case.’” Axelson said. “You’re just scaling up each time you do it.”

The accelerator program is funded through Minnesota Energy Alley, a public-private partnership the Legislature created two years ago to position the state as a leader in energy, the way it is in medical devices and health technology.

“People know Minnesota as a place for medical innovation. They expect that to be part of our growing economy,” Axelson said. “And I think that Minnesota Energy Alley is kind of creating that equivalent, with the reputation and momentum.”

In the last year or two, interest in LiquidCool has been heating up, Tufty said. The demonstration project will give the company a chance to test the technology in the real world, and convince more potential customers it works, he said.

“We’ve been here for a long time, but now the need for our technology is suddenly materializing, so that’s good,” Tufty said.