Immersion Oil Thermal Performance Characteristics and Comparisons

Immersion oil selection is one of the important tasks to enable efficient immersion cooling. In addition to the safety and reliability consideration, thermal characteristic is the key point. In this paper, three off-the-self immersion oils have been investigated via thermal characteristic comparison and CFD simulation. Kinematic viscosity, coefficient of thermal expansion, thermal conductivity, and thermal capacities are important thermal characteristics and have been compared. The cooling performance of these immersion oils has been compared via CFD simulation. Factors such as flash points that have an impact on safety and reliability have also been included. This paper provides a correlation for thermal performance consideration as well as points out the flash point limitation when selecting proper immersion oils.