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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
by 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 agoI 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 agoThat 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 agoCooling 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.