5 ms·

If the water is only used for cooling then it should be a closed loop system and doesn't "used up" any water? Unless Data Center uses water in a way we dont kn

by ksec 1y ago

If the water is only used for cooling then it should be a closed loop system and doesn't "used up" any water? Unless Data Center uses water in a way we dont know?

asib 1y ago
Hmm bit of googling indicates one example: at least some data centers use cooling towers which dissipate heat via evaporation, i.e. loss of some water from the system. I suppose not all water cooling systems (especially of this scale) work exactly like e.g. a water-cooled PC.
devmor 1y ago
Some types of industrial cooling pull fresh water in and dump heated water back out as waste water. I don't know how Meta's datacenters are cooled, but such a thing does exist. Describing it as "gobbling" is definitely odd, in either case.
- haiku2077 1y ago
  Sometimes the heated water is useful. I worked at a campus in a cold region where our on site DC's heated water was used to heat the floors.
  - devmor 1y ago
    Linus of LTT/LMG has a tiny version of this kind of thing at his home where the water cooling loop for servers in his basement ultimately heat his in-ground swimming pool.
- cbm-vic-20 1y ago
  I've not "done the math", but venting slightly warmer water vapor from a tower seems less ecologically damaging than releasing warm water back into an ecosystem that can't handle it, by diluting the waste energy over a wider area. In the end it's about energy dissipation; that heat's got to go somewhere, and there's only so much you can recapture with cogeneration.
  - toast0 1y ago
    Drawing on ground water and releasing it into the atmosphere isn't great if the demand exceeds the aquifer's ability to recharge. Discharging heated water into a retention pond might allow it to recharge the aquifer (although some would evaporate), and form a less open loop. Or, discharging it into sewers might offset fresh water needs at a downstream treatment plant, and the temperature differential may or may not be important. Sometimes, reclaimed water from treatment plants can be used for cooling as well, and that's better than pulling fresh water directly.
surge 1y ago
Engadget often has sensationalist, inaccurate headlines. I stopped reading them when I was intimately with the actual details of an article vs the way they framed/presented it. Also, what kind of water? Pure clean water, untreated water, Grey water, etc? Bottled water and other industries consume millions of gallons too. If its for cooling, I imagine water can be used that isn't being used for any other purpose. At least the water cycle is a thing, the alternative is A/C cooling which would be even more harmful. This is one of those cases where even if a company picks the least bad option, they're going to get criticized because negative agitating headlines get clicks. A reminder that Meta tried to go green/nuclear, but couldn't because some bees were on or near the proposed location. Another example, of letting the perfect environmental ideal that isn't feasible be the enemy of the good.
- barbazoo 1y ago
  Do some research, there's lots of info online. Water use for example: https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-co...
  - surge 1y ago
    It didn't specify if fresh water meant non-salt water from a natural water source, or treated drinkable water. I'd need to see the rainfall averages for the region the data center is in, susceptibility to drought to know how much of a problem this actually is. Data center locations are often chosen based on cooling costs, availability of greener electricity, water, etc. This blanket statement, "only 3% of the world is fresh water" is pointless and alarmist language because a good portion of the world is desert or arid. Some places have very little water, others have an over-abundance, and location matters. Most of the water problems regarding access to clean water and access to drinkable water have more to do with over populating a region because of the nice weather (LA, CA for example) beyond what is sustainable or practical. Putting a data center in Illinois or something has very little do to with the problems of access to water in southern CA, where movies like Chinatown as far back as the 70s depicts the problem of access to water being a huge problem because it gets little rainfall being close to the desert and isn't a good place to put a large populace and not have that problem. If they're building the data center in the desert or a drought susceptible region, where fresh water usage is way past its limits, fine, but if the data center is in the Upper Midwest or parts of the Pacific NW, the consumption of water there isn't going to have any impact on the areas that have a consumption issue.
barbazoo 1y ago
From https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-co... > Large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons per day, equivalent to the water use of a town populated by 10,000 to 50,000 people. Doesn't seem to be a closed system.
- jeffbee 1y ago
  I guess this statement is technically correct, since a data center that needs a net of 5 million gallons of water per day would indeed be large, but I wonder if there are any such data centers in reality. None of the data center sites, which are agglomerations of data centers, rather than individual data centers, in Google's 2025 environmental report use that much. Google's worldwide footprint is a net 22 million gallons per day, and their largest complex of data centers in or near Council Bluffs, Iowa, uses less than 3 million gallons per day. So this supposed "large data center" would be something like 10x as large as any Google data center?
- tacticalturtle 1y ago
  That article has been posted several times in this thread. But that article lists out several solutions for using water cooling - one of which is evaporative. And another mentioned is closed loop. How do we know which solution Meta is using here?
- rixed 1y ago
  Cooling towers can take water from a stream for instance, and return it mostly to that stream (just a few °C hotter). The quantity of water that is lost to the atmosphere is quite small. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooling_tower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooling_tower it's less than 1% of the circulating water. At first approximation, water "lost" to cool down industrial installation seems not a concern at all compared to water lost to grow corn to feed cows for human consumption.
lxgr 1y ago
It's also used for humidification to avoid static discharges, apparently: https://datacenters.microsoft.com/sustainability/efficiency/ https://datacenters.microsoft.com/sustainability/efficiency/ Looking at the figures quoted there, this can explain why e.g. the Ariozona data center uses so much more water than the Singapore one, although evaporative (i.e. open loop) cooling probably also plays a role in many of these cases.
red-iron-pine 1y ago
most don't use closed loop

by ksec 1y ago

If the water is only used for cooling then it should be a closed loop system and doesn't "used up" any water? Unless Data Center uses water in a way we dont know?

asib 1y ago

Hmm bit of googling indicates one example: at least some data centers use cooling towers which dissipate heat via evaporation, i.e. loss of some water from the system. I suppose not all water cooling systems (especially of this scale) work exactly like e.g. a water-cooled PC.

devmor 1y ago

Some types of industrial cooling pull fresh water in and dump heated water back out as waste water. I don't know how Meta's datacenters are cooled, but such a thing does exist. Describing it as "gobbling" is definitely odd, in either case.

haiku2077 1y ago
Sometimes the heated water is useful. I worked at a campus in a cold region where our on site DC's heated water was used to heat the floors.
- devmor 1y ago
  Linus of LTT/LMG has a tiny version of this kind of thing at his home where the water cooling loop for servers in his basement ultimately heat his in-ground swimming pool.
cbm-vic-20 1y ago
I've not "done the math", but venting slightly warmer water vapor from a tower seems less ecologically damaging than releasing warm water back into an ecosystem that can't handle it, by diluting the waste energy over a wider area. In the end it's about energy dissipation; that heat's got to go somewhere, and there's only so much you can recapture with cogeneration.
- toast0 1y ago
  Drawing on ground water and releasing it into the atmosphere isn't great if the demand exceeds the aquifer's ability to recharge. Discharging heated water into a retention pond might allow it to recharge the aquifer (although some would evaporate), and form a less open loop. Or, discharging it into sewers might offset fresh water needs at a downstream treatment plant, and the temperature differential may or may not be important. Sometimes, reclaimed water from treatment plants can be used for cooling as well, and that's better than pulling fresh water directly.

surge 1y ago

Engadget often has sensationalist, inaccurate headlines. I stopped reading them when I was intimately with the actual details of an article vs the way they framed/presented it. Also, what kind of water? Pure clean water, untreated water, Grey water, etc? Bottled water and other industries consume millions of gallons too. If its for cooling, I imagine water can be used that isn't being used for any other purpose. At least the water cycle is a thing, the alternative is A/C cooling which would be even more harmful. This is one of those cases where even if a company picks the least bad option, they're going to get criticized because negative agitating headlines get clicks. A reminder that Meta tried to go green/nuclear, but couldn't because some bees were on or near the proposed location. Another example, of letting the perfect environmental ideal that isn't feasible be the enemy of the good.

barbazoo 1y ago
Do some research, there's lots of info online. Water use for example: https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-co...
- surge 1y ago
  It didn't specify if fresh water meant non-salt water from a natural water source, or treated drinkable water. I'd need to see the rainfall averages for the region the data center is in, susceptibility to drought to know how much of a problem this actually is. Data center locations are often chosen based on cooling costs, availability of greener electricity, water, etc. This blanket statement, "only 3% of the world is fresh water" is pointless and alarmist language because a good portion of the world is desert or arid. Some places have very little water, others have an over-abundance, and location matters. Most of the water problems regarding access to clean water and access to drinkable water have more to do with over populating a region because of the nice weather (LA, CA for example) beyond what is sustainable or practical. Putting a data center in Illinois or something has very little do to with the problems of access to water in southern CA, where movies like Chinatown as far back as the 70s depicts the problem of access to water being a huge problem because it gets little rainfall being close to the desert and isn't a good place to put a large populace and not have that problem. If they're building the data center in the desert or a drought susceptible region, where fresh water usage is way past its limits, fine, but if the data center is in the Upper Midwest or parts of the Pacific NW, the consumption of water there isn't going to have any impact on the areas that have a consumption issue.

barbazoo 1y ago

From https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-co... > Large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons per day, equivalent to the water use of a town populated by 10,000 to 50,000 people. Doesn't seem to be a closed system.

jeffbee 1y ago
I guess this statement is technically correct, since a data center that needs a net of 5 million gallons of water per day would indeed be large, but I wonder if there are any such data centers in reality. None of the data center sites, which are agglomerations of data centers, rather than individual data centers, in Google's 2025 environmental report use that much. Google's worldwide footprint is a net 22 million gallons per day, and their largest complex of data centers in or near Council Bluffs, Iowa, uses less than 3 million gallons per day. So this supposed "large data center" would be something like 10x as large as any Google data center?
tacticalturtle 1y ago
That article has been posted several times in this thread. But that article lists out several solutions for using water cooling - one of which is evaporative. And another mentioned is closed loop. How do we know which solution Meta is using here?
rixed 1y ago
Cooling towers can take water from a stream for instance, and return it mostly to that stream (just a few °C hotter). The quantity of water that is lost to the atmosphere is quite small. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooling_tower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooling_tower it's less than 1% of the circulating water. At first approximation, water "lost" to cool down industrial installation seems not a concern at all compared to water lost to grow corn to feed cows for human consumption.

lxgr 1y ago

It's also used for humidification to avoid static discharges, apparently: https://datacenters.microsoft.com/sustainability/efficiency/ https://datacenters.microsoft.com/sustainability/efficiency/ Looking at the figures quoted there, this can explain why e.g. the Ariozona data center uses so much more water than the Singapore one, although evaporative (i.e. open loop) cooling probably also plays a role in many of these cases.

red-iron-pine 1y ago

most don't use closed loop