Pacific Rubber & Packing Takes VeriClean Seals™ to OCP Global Summit as AI Data Centers Face the Reliability Wall

PRP holding meetings October 12–15 at the SJ Convention Center as rack densities climb and the industry’s specification gap on loop cleanliness is a focus.

SAN CARLOS, CA, UNITED STATES, September 29, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — As rack densities climb toward the next generation of AI factories, Pacific Rubber & Packing, Inc. (PRP) will take VeriClean Seals™ to the 2026 Open Compute Project Global Summit, October 12–15 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center. The company is scheduling meetings with cooling OEMs, CDU and cold-plate vendors, hyperscale operators, and the engineers who own fluid-flow architecture.

This year’s OCP theme is “Scaling Innovation for the AI Era.” Scaling compute is no longer just a silicon problem. It is a thermal-reliability problem. A few microns on a seal surface can cost millions in throttled GPUs, delayed training runs, and cooling-related downtime. Every liquid-cooled rack depends on ultra-pure coolant and unobstructed flow. Yet every cooling loop still relies on commodity elastomers sourced through industrial catalogs, specified by material family, not by surface cleanliness.

That is the specification gap no one owns. Mechanical engineers specify EPDM, FKM, PTFE. Coolant chemists specify compatibility. Cleanliness specs are completely uncontrolled. The unmanaged variable sits directly upstream of the most expensive silicon in the building: particle load on seal surfaces that can seed bubble nucleation on cold plates, obstruct microchannels, degrade thermal capacity, accelerate pump wear, and shorten cold-plate life. Industry research puts the thermal penalty of particulate fouling at an estimated 5–8°C, enough to trigger 10–15% GPU throughput loss under moderate throttling.

“A seal is one of the cheapest parts in the loop, and it sits directly upstream of the most expensive silicon in the building. When racks move from 40 kilowatts to 80, 120, and beyond, ‘cleanroom-packed’ is no longer a spec. Surface-verified cleanliness is reliability insurance. That is what we are bringing to San Jose.”
— Bill Sharratt, President & CEO, Pacific Rubber & Packing, Inc.

VeriClean Seals™ close the gap. They are elastomer seals engineered for coolant purity, thermal stability, and reliability. Each one is measured, cleaned, and documented for surface particulate contamination before it enters the loop. Processed in PRP’s ISO Class 7 cleanrooms, VeriClean delivers documented particle risk reduction of 60–90 percent versus commodity product,* verified by optical microscopy and laser particle counting from 1.3 µm across 16 size bins. Compound, durometer, dimensions, and chemical compatibility do not change. Existing BOMs do not need requalification. Each lot ships with a QR-coded certificate and chain-of-custody record, the opposite of “cleanroom-packed” assumptions.

PRP has supplied precision elastomers to semiconductor, aerospace, and high-purity process markets since 1979. VeriClean applies that fab-grade discipline to the Technology Cooling System (TCS) and Facility Water System (FWS) interface now being standardized across the OCP Cooling Environments community and ASHRAE TC 9.9 liquid classes. Standards for coolant cleanliness are emerging. Seal cleanliness specifications remain largely unaddressed.

Meetings at the Summit will focus on:

• Where seal specification and contamination control actually sit inside design authority: mechanical, materials, or systems.
• How non-integral particulate load in TCS and FWS loops is being measured before a rack or CDU goes live, and where it is not.
• Compatibility as coolant chemistry moves beyond standard glycol into higher-performance and more chemically aggressive fluids.
• A path to a common cleanliness specification for wetted elastomers, the way semiconductor fabs already specify consumables.

To schedule a meeting during OCP Global Summit 2026, contact michelle.murray-smith@pacificrubber.com or (650) 595-5888. Product data, the VCQ qualification program, and the ROI calculator are at vericlean.one.

About Pacific Rubber & Packing, Inc.
Founded in 1979 and headquartered in San Carlos, California, Pacific Rubber & Packing, Inc. is a family-owned, engineer-led manufacturer and distributor of precision elastomer seals, O-rings, and custom assemblies for semiconductor, data center, medical device, biopharma, aerospace, and energy applications. PRP operates ISO Class 7 cleanrooms with in-house precision cleaning and the VeriClean Seals™ quantified particulate-reduction line. Learn more at pacificrubber.com and vericlean.one.

Michelle Murray-Smith
PRP
+1 650-595-5888
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