Ten year liquid cooling market analysis and forecast

The ‘Data Centre Liquid Cooling Market – A Global and Regional Analysis: Focus on Product, Application, and Country Analysis – Analysis and Forecast, 2024-2034’ report’s release predicts a strong CAGR of 23.96% in the market between 2024-2034. According to the forecast, the global data centre liquid cooling market is expected to reach $48.42 billion in value by 2034, up from $5.65 billion in 2024.

The market analysis explores products, applications, and factors affecting different regions worldwide. It examines key elements including challenges and limitations that may impact the market, drivers, and predicts growth in major regions including the US, South Korea, and Germany.

Despite challenges like large implementation costs and a lack of standardisation, liquid cooling technology continues to play a important role in modern data centres. For instance, AI systems are generating higher heat densities require more efficient cooling methods for them to be cost effective to operate.

The increased need for sustainable and energy-efficient cooling solutions is also prevalent in supporting efficient high-performance computing (HPC) clusters, and large-scale data centres in general, which have driven the expansion of liquid cooling systems’ use in recent years.

Advanced cooling technologies, like immersion and direct-to-chip cooling are also part of the predicted market growth. These technologies are more effective than traditional air cooling at managing heat, offer improved cooling capabilities, and consume less energy.

The growing pressures to reduce and minimise carbon footprints and to achieve net-zero goals further spur the adoption of new cooling technologies. Liquid cooling systems have advanced in operational reliability and capacity recently, and industry players have pursued innovations such as sustainable cooling fluids and flexible cooling systems specifically designed to meet the challenges of AI and 5G applications.

According to the report, the hyperscale data centre segment is forecast to lead procurement of data centre liquid cooling technologies, as global enterprises, like Google, Microsoft, and Alibaba meet increased user demand for scalable, energy-efficient compute and storage.

Another prominent sector driving investment in liquid cooling is the telecoms industry, due to its role handling the substantial amounts of data generated by data-heavy applications. Efficient data transmission and processing is in higher demand due to the rapid growth and adoption of technologies like AI, virtual reality, 5G, and 6G.

The banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) sector continues its transition to paperless operations, which similarly contributes to increased demand on data centres.

The analysis also states how Rear Door Heat Exchangers (RDHX) are one of the latest solutions to come to the liquid cooling market. RDHX systems’ sensors measure heat generated by individual racks and help to reduce overall energy consumption. Research from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory [PDF], has shown RDHX systems are more effective at eliminating localised hotspots compared to traditional techniques and help create uniform temperature distribution throughout a data centre.

Recent years have seen ongoing efforts to make data centres more energy efficient and sustainable. For instance, Boyd, a company that engineers thermal management technologies, partnered NVIDIA and the US Department of Energy in August 2023 as part of the COOLERCHIPS programme. The programme’s goal is to “develop transformational, highly efficient, and reliable cooling technologies for data centres,” specifically to lower cooling energy use to under 5% of a data centre’s total energy consumption.

(Image: “Data Center” by Bob Mical is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.)

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