Foundational Liquid Cooling Certification™
IPE Solutions’ Foundational Liquid Cooling Certification™ (FLCC) is the globally recognized standard for understanding, deploying, and operating liquid cooling in modern data centers. Designed for the realities of high-density compute and AI infrastructure, FLCC establishes a common, vendor-agnostic foundation that aligns engineers, operators, architects, and decision-makers around how liquid cooling actually works—technically, operationally, and at scale.
The program was developed by Dr. Curtis Breville, a widely recognized and respected authority in liquid cooling, drawing on decades of real-world experience across hyperscale, colocation, and enterprise environments. FLCC reflects practical lessons learned from system design, deployment, troubleshooting, and field operations. Rather than focusing on specific products, the certification emphasizes principles, tradeoffs, and risk awareness—preparing professionals to engage confidently and responsibly in liquid-cooling discussions at every level.
An FLCC-certified professional can be expected to clearly explain liquid-cooling architectures and components; evaluate cooling options against power, water, and risk constraints; identify common failure modes and mitigation strategies; and participate meaningfully in design reviews, vendor evaluations, and operational planning. Most importantly, FLCC equips individuals to make—and advocate for—more informed, responsible decisions that reduce risk, improve efficiency, and support long-term sustainability goals.
As liquid cooling becomes essential rather than optional, FLCC serves as a trusted starting point—ensuring organizations don’t just adopt liquid cooling, but adopt it with confidence, clarity, and accountability.
An individual who holds the Foundational Liquid Cooling Certification™ (FLCC) can be expected to:
Speak confidently and accurately about liquid cooling architectures, components, and operating principles
Differentiate cooling options (air, hybrid, direct-to-chip, immersion) and explain where each succeeds—or fails
Evaluate liquid cooling designs in the context of power density, heat flux, PUE, WUE, and sustainability goals
Identify common risks and failure modes associated with liquid cooling systems and articulate mitigation strategies
Participate meaningfully in design reviews, vendor evaluations, and technical discussions without reliance on marketing claims
Ask better questions of OEMs, integrators, and AEC advisors—and recognize incomplete or misleading answers
Advocate for more responsible decisions that balance performance, reliability, efficiency, and environmental impact
Reduce organizational risk by applying a sound, vendor-agnostic understanding of how liquid cooling behaves at scale
Starter Designation Badge:
Liquid Cooling 101: Learn the history of where liquid cooling came from along with where we are today, the trends, technologies, and differences between the types of liquid cooling.
Immersion 200: Get the overview of the fantastic benefits Immersion cooling brings and learn the differences between the coolant phases, immersion strengths & thermal limitations.
Direct Liquid Cooling 200: Get educated on everything direct liquid cooling with insights on everything it takes including passive cold plate loops, coolant, CDUs, and fluid networks.
Associate Designation Badge:
(must have Starter Designation Badge)
Hybrid Cooling Options 300: Liquid cooling isn’t always black & white and learning the benefits of mixed cooling types and alternatives to the standards arms you with options that just might be right for you.
Power Usage Effectiveness 300: Understand how liquid cooling is critical to driving overall data center efficiency and what it takes to reach that 1.0 pinnacle of data center efficiency.
Professional Certification:
(must have Associate Designation Badge)
Choosing the Right Liquid Cooling 400: Now that you have the understanding, it is time to learn how to put it into practice to choose the right liquid cooling solution for your environment.
Service & Support 400: Liquid cooling is more than the pieces & parts. Problems occur in every environment. Knowing the type of maintenance and best practices to follow are critical as is troubleshooting.