KB News Desk
Oil refiners find new growth engine amid worsening profits
The rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) in recent years has prompted four oil refiners in Korea to pursue the production of cooling liquids for data centers, according to industry officials, Wednesday.
Amid a skeptical outlook for their second-quarter earnings, driven by declining refining margins, the four companies have faced challenges in establishing dominance in the rapidly expanding liquid immersion cooling market.
Considered more cost-efficient than air cooling, liquid immersion cooling is a way of lowering the temperature of servers by immersing them in electrically non-conductive fluid. According to market intelligence provider Future Market Insights, the global demand for immersion cooling is expected to grow by 21.7 percent annually on average to $2.5 billion by 2032.
As liquid immersion cooling gains traction as a novel thermal management method, HD Hyundai Oilbank recently initiated the development of technologies associated with this approach.
“We secured the trademark right for ‘XTeer E-cooling Fluid’ in advance, to brace for the potential release of our cooling fluid,” said an official at the HD Hyundai subsidiary, which has used the XTeer brand for its lubricants.
S-Oil has also conducted extensive research on liquid immersion cooling technologies at its technical service and development center, established last year in Seoul.
“The global liquid immersion cooling market is expected to grow explosively, so we have looked for opportunities in the market, considering our competitiveness in the lubricant industry,” the Saudi Aramco-owned refiner said during a conference call on its first-quarter earnings.
SK Innovation has already made large-scale investments in the cooling fluid business as the first mover in the Korean market. Its lubricant subsidiary, SK Enmove, entered the market in 2022, through its $25 million investment in Green Revolution Cooling (GRC), an American firm specializing in immersion cooling for data centers.
In 2023, SK Enmove’s cooling fluid and GRC’s equipment enabled four months of successful test operation of SK Telecom’s facilities. Their technologies will be applied this year to an AI data center in SK Telecom’s building in Incheon.
“Following the existing tank type liquid immersion cooling solutions, SK Enmove plans to launch optimized product development for various liquid cooling solutions by developing thermal fluids for precision liquid cooling technology,” an SK Innovation official said.
GS Caltex entered the thermal management market last November through the release of Kixx Immersion Fluid S. The company is also pushing ahead with the development of fluid that can also cool batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage systems.
“We will develop various types of cooling fluid for all industry sectors that want energy efficiency,” a GS Caltex official said.
