Immersion

Project Leads

Jessica Gullbrand, Rolf Brink

The OCP Immersion Sub-Project is a dedicated initiative within the OCP Cooling Environments project focused on advancing the development, adoption, and standardization of immersion cooling technologies across the data center industry. Through a global, volunteer-driven effort, the project unites technology providers, end-users, researchers, and manufacturers to collaboratively develop open specifications, reference designs, and best practices.

The project addresses key challenges in thermal management, energy and water consumption, operational efficiency, and sustainability. It promotes innovation while maintaining alignment with the OCP tenets of efficiency, impact, scale, openness, and sustainability. By providing an open and collaborative environment, the Immersion Project empowers the global data center ecosystem to adopt scalable and interoperable immersion cooling solutions with confidence.

Key deliverables include open-source specifications, whitepapers, best practice documents, technical standards, educational materials, and participation in industry collaboration for global impact.

Scope

In-Scope

The OCP Immersion Project’s scope includes:

• Technology Definition and Standardization: Development, evaluation, and classification of immersion cooling technologies, including both single-phase and two-phase systems.
• Guidelines and Requirements: Creation of open-source documentation for the design, deployment, maintenance, and safety of immersion systems.
• Hardware and Component Support: Technical standards for IT equipment, dielectric fluids, CDUs, tanks, and other immersion-specific components.
• Reference Designs and Interoperability: Development of reference designs to support interoperability and product certification pathways aligned with OCP’s Recognition Program.
• Sustainability and Environmental Stewardship: Frameworks to reduce resource consumption and promote circularity, including reuse of waste heat and materials recycling.
• Community Engagement and Education: Delivery of training, workshops, onboarding programs, and outreach to grow industry awareness and technical proficiency.
• Collaborative Alignment: Integration with other OCP projects and external industry bodies through liaison functions to ensure consistency, avoid duplication, and accelerate adoption.

Out-of-Scope

The project excludes:

• Non-immersion cooling technologies (e.g., air cooling, indirect liquid cooling)
• Proprietary or vendor-specific solutions
• Non-data center applications (e.g., consumer electronics, automotive)
• Development of unrelated IT standards or general data center infrastructure (e.g., power distribution, building architecture)
• Commercial product development or financial consulting
• Long-term support or warranty services for implemented immersion systems.

Organizational Structure and Governance

The OCP Immersion Project operates under a unique scalable governance structure designed to ensure transparency, collaboration, and alignment with the broader Open Compute Project mission. This structure supports agile development and decision-making, while providing strong oversight across strategic, technical, and operational dimensions.

• Project Governance Framework

Governance Bodies

Project Leadership

Project Leadership serves as the driving force behind the project’s initiatives, providing strategic direction and high-level decision-making. Leaders are responsible for resource allocation, representing the project within OCP and the wider industry, and ensuring cohesion across the technical and support structures.

Project Steering Committee

The Project Steering Committee (PSC) is the project’s central governing body. It includes project leaders, chairs and co-chairs of the technical committees, and leaders of support teams. The PSC ensures:

• Strategic alignment with OCP-wide goals
• Oversight and coordination across project components
• Quality control of all project outputs
• Approval of materials for publication

The PSC also holds the authority to revise the project’s organizational scope and structure as needed

Technical Committees

Each Technical Committee governs a major domain of immersion cooling technology, including:

• Fluids Committee - focus on fluid selection, testing, and standardization
• Solutions Committee - tank, rack, and system-level integration
• Reliability Committee - durability, risk mitigation, and lifecycle performance
• ITE Committee - integration of IT equipment with immersion cooling

These committees provide:

• Strategic and technical guidance to workstreams
• Quality assurance of outputs
• Coordination between related efforts
• Engagement with external stakeholders and standards bodies

Support Teams

Specialized teams provide operational and strategic support across the project:

• Community Outreach Team - Promotes immersion activities, manages PR, and drives engagement
• OCP Projects Liaison Team - Ensures integration and collaboration across other OCP projects
• Industry Liaison Team - Maintains relationships with external bodies and forums
• Community Enablement Council - Facilitates onboarding, contributor engagement, and tool development
• Challenges Council - Coordinates industry-wide technical challenges and solutions

These teams are essential to the sustainability and visibility of the project’s impact.

Project Calls

This subproject meets on the 3rd Tuesday of the month from 07:00-08:00am PT/16:00-17:00 CET/22:00-23:00 CST.

Call Calendar

These meeting are recorded via audio and video. By participating you consent that these recordings may be made publicly available. Any presentation materials, proposals and meeting minutes are published on the respective project's wiki page and are open to the public in accordance to OCP's Bylaws and IP Policy. This can be found at http://opencompute.org/about/ocp-policies/. If you have any questions please contact OCP.

OCP Cooling Environments - Immersion Cooling Calendar

The calendar displayed here is updated nightly from the project's Groups.io Calendar