Liquid cooling firm Accelsius has joined one of the projects within the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) ARPA-E COOLERCHIPS initiative.

The project, “Holistic Co-Design of Novel Hybrid Cooling Technology for the Data Center of the Future,” will develop a next-generation hybrid architecture that combines direct-to-chip evaporative cooling with air-based solutions such as rear door heat exchangers.

Accelsius will provide its MR250 Coolant Distribution Unit (CDU); the multi-rack, in-row, 250kW two-phase offering will be incorporated into the project’s test infrastructure at the University of Texas at Arlington campus, with general availability planned for late 2025.

“It’s an exciting opportunity to collaborate with fellow thermal experts from across the industry,” said Dr. Richard Bonner, chief technology officer at Accelsius. “This project provides a bigger stage to showcase the meaningful advancements we’ve made in two-phase cooling and to push the envelope on what’s possible for future data center efficiency.”

The project Accelsius has joined is led by Professor Dereje Agonafer, a presidential distinguished professor and member of the National Academy of Engineering, at the University of Texas at Arlington.

“The addition of Accelsius technology to our lab and project will improve our understanding and benchmarking of two-phase, direct-to-chip cooling as a practical and scalable option for growing rack densities,” said Professor Agonafer.

Announced in 2022, COOLERCHIPS (Cooling Operations Optimized for Leaps in Energy, Reliability, and Carbon Hyperefficiency for Information Processing Systems) program aims to reduce total cooling energy consumption to less than 5 percent of a data center’s IT load.

The Arlington-led project is one of 15 within the COOLERCHIPS program; companies within the initiative include JetCool, Intel, Raytheon, HP, Nvidia, and Flexnode.

“It’s great to see leaders like Dereje Agonafer and Richard Bonner working together to shape the future of two-phase cooling technology,” said Peter de Bock, program director at ARPA-E. “Accelsius and The University of Texas at Arlington are advancing important work under the COOLERCHIPS program, and I’m excited to see the impact this collaboration will have on US leadership in next-generation data center efficiency.”

Texas-based Accelsius was founded in 2022 by Innventure to commercialize technology developed by Nokia's Bell Labs. Accelsius’ NeuCool technology had been developed for five years by Bell Labs but was not productized. No Bell Labs staff came to Accelsius.