Special Guest Speaker: Bret Trim, Electrical Engineer at Soltex specializing in liquid cooling for data center applications.
In this educational webinar, Bret Trim, Electrical Engineer at Soltex and a specialist in liquid cooling for data center applications, will guide materials engineers through a rigorous exploration of thermal conductivity in heat transfer fluids, from first principles to real-world system performance. Whether you are evaluating fluid chemistries for a new deployment, optimizing an existing single-phase or two-phase system, or benchmarking fluid candidates against evolving thermal targets, this session will equip you with the scientific grounding and practical insight needed to make informed, high-confidence material selection decisions.
What Is Thermal Conductivity and Why Does It Matter?
The session opens with a foundational treatment of thermal conductivity as a material property, examining how it is defined, measured, and influenced by molecular structure, fluid chemistry, temperature, and pressure. Attendees will develop a clear understanding of how thermal conductivity interacts with other critical fluid parameters — including viscosity, specific heat capacity, and density, to determine the overall heat transfer coefficient of a liquid cooling system. The interplay between these properties and system-level performance metrics, such as junction-to-coolant thermal resistance and pumping power requirements, will be examined in depth.
Real-World Performance: A Soltex Case Study
Theory meets practice in a detailed case study drawn directly from Soltex’s field experience. Bret will walk attendees through a real-world liquid cooling deployment in which thermal conductivity of the selected heat transfer fluid was a decisive engineering variable. The case study will cover the selection criteria and benchmarking methodology used to evaluate candidate fluids, the measured thermal performance outcomes in the deployed system, and the lessons learned regarding fluid behavior under sustained operational conditions. This grounded, data-driven perspective will give materials engineers a practical reference point for their own fluid evaluation processes.
Engineering Takeaways for Materials Engineers
The webinar concludes with actionable guidance for materials engineers working on liquid cooling systems, including recommended testing standards and characterization methods for thermal conductivity measurement, key fluid performance thresholds to target for single-phase immersion and cold plate applications, and a framework for balancing thermal conductivity against the full spectrum of fluid selection criteria. Attendees will leave with both a deepened understanding of the science and a sharper toolkit for applied engineering decisions.
This is a must-attend session for materials engineers at the frontier of liquid cooling technology who want to move beyond data sheets and develop a rigorous, physics-based approach to heat transfer fluid selection and system optimization.
Keywords: thermal conductivity, heat transfer fluids, liquid cooling, data center cooling, dielectric fluids, immersion cooling, cold plate cooling, single-phase cooling, two-phase cooling, polyalphaolefin, synthetic fluids, fluid thermal properties, thermal resistance, power density, high-performance computing, HPC cooling, AI data centers, fluid selection, materials engineering, Soltex, heat transfer coefficient, viscosity, specific heat capacity, fluid benchmarking, thermal management, fluid chemistry, cooling system optimization, PUE, chip cooling, fluid characterization
This webinar will air on June 25, 2026 2:00 pm GMT-3.
Register here