Malaysia is developing a palm oil-based fluid for immersion cooling.
The country’s Palm Oil Board (MPOB), a government agency that supports the palm oil industry, is in the final stages of developing the fluid, known as Sawit EcoTherm.
According to MPOB, using the fluid could reduce water and energy consumption at Malaysia’s data centers.
Dr. Noor Khairin Mohd, senior research officer of the process engineering and design unit, part of MPOB's advanced oleochemical technology division, told Malaysian news agency Bernama: “If widely adopted, immersion cooling technology using Sawit EcoTherm has the potential to significantly reduce water demand in the data center industry.”
The world’s most popular vegetable oil, palm oil is derived from the pulp of the African oil palm, and is widely used in food manufacturing and beauty products, as well as for biofuel. Malaysia is the second biggest producer of the oil, after neighboring Indonesia.
Though it can be produced sustainably, palm oil production has been linked to damaging deforestation, with plantations of palms replacing diverse habitats for plants and wildlife. Environmental campaigners say the palm oil industry has directly harmed endangered species including orangutans and Sumatran elephants.
As well as the capital Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia has an active data center market focused on the city of Johor, which benefits from its proximity to the financial hub of Singapore. But it is unlikely many of its data centers feature significant immersion cooling deployments, with direct-to-chip liquid cooling usually favored by AI data center companies.
A 65MW immersion-cooled data center is, however, being planned in Cyberjaya, Malaysia, funded by state-backed developer Selangor Industrial Corporation.
MPOB hopes to work with data centers companies to prove the efficacy of its fluid.
Cargill already markets an immersion cooling fluid that is 90 percent vegetable oil, while other options on the market are based on substances including fluorocarbons and mineral oils.