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Data centers consume enormous amounts of water for evaporative cooling. What part is nonsense? If the data center is built somewhere with ample water supplies
by margalabargala 9mo ago
Data centers consume enormous amounts of water for evaporative cooling. What part is nonsense?
If the data center is built somewhere with ample water supplies this isn't an issue. If it's pulling from groundwater this can be a huge issue. Groundwater isn't infinite and is being depleted in many areas.
- estearum 9mo agoI was under the impression they capture the evaporation, let it cool, and recycle it?
- sidewndr46 9mo agoI guess it's possible to have a condensing station, but generally speaking you'd need to supply input energy to allow it to cool down and condense somehow. The bigger question here is if a datacenter using evaporative cooling where does the moisture go? If it just feeds a cloud system that rains on nearby fields, it's not much different than irrigating crops. If it feeds clouds that go offshore and rain into the ocean, it's similar to just diverting drinking water into the ocean
- 306bobby 9mo agoI must be missing something, why can't it be entirely closed loop like a water radiator in an old car? A simple fan running through large radiator cores would certainly condense within the system, keeping the water in the system
- quickthrowman 9mo agoA closed loop system has a COP of 4, adding in cooling towers almost doubles that to 7. You can reject 1.75x more heat for the same amount of electricity by adding evaporative cooling towers. COP is coefficient of performance.
- pfdietz 9mo agoOne thing to remember is that much of the waste heat from your car's engine goes out the exhaust, not out the radiator. I think the two are often about equal.
- pfdietz 9mo agoA 1 GW heat source evaporates about 9 million gallons per day. In 2024, US data centers consumed power at an average rate of about 21 GW. So, that would be about 70 billion gallons per year evaporated.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- pfdietz 9mo ago> I was under the impression they capture the evaporation, let it cool, and recycle it? So, how do they get rid of the latent heat of evaporation that's released when the water recondenses? The whole point of evaporative cooling is to soak up that latent heat and release it later, out in the environment, when the water recondenses somewhere else. It's kind of like why Dune's stillsuits don't work.
- moomoo11 9mo agoThey’ll be built and deployed in space soon. Elon said so.
- PaulKeeble 9mo agoThe reason they consume water is the same reason space is a bad place to put data centres, getting rid of the heat is a challenge. Having only radiative heat dissipation is going to severely limit space based manufacture and computing, it puts significant constraints on the space station already.
- moomoo11 9mo agoyeah but Elon said so and thus it must be true
- michaelt 9mo agoIn the USA, data centres consume about 164 billion gallons of water annually [1] Irrigation consumes 118 billion gallons per day [1] and thermoelectric power plants a further 133 billion gallons per day. There's enormous amounts, and there's enormous amounts. If you really want to get mad about water being wasted, look up what californian alfalfa growers pay for their water. [1] https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-co... [2] https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2018/3035/fs20183035.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2018/3035/fs20183035.pdf
- rapatel0 9mo agoNew datacenter projects are usually closed loop now. From your first citation: > Closed-loop cooling systems enable the reuse of both recycled wastewater and freshwater, allowing water supplies to be used multiple times. A cooling tower can use external air to cool the heated water, allowing it to return to its original temperature. These systems can reduce freshwater use by up to 70%.
- quickthrowman 9mo agoCitation please, I don’t buy it. Evaporative cooling towers almost double the efficiency of heat rejection vs a closed loop system. I don’t see any data center operator giving up those operating cost efficiency gains just to save some water, but I could be wrong.
- rapatel0 9mo agoAs i stated, It's literally in the first link from the OP.
- quickthrowman 9mo agoYeah, I still don’t buy it. No data center operator is going to use almost twice as much electricity to operate their cooling system if they could install evaporative cooling towers and almost double the efficiency of heat rejection. You can remove 7W of heat for 1W of electricity with a cooling tower, it’s 4W for 1W with a closed loop system. I could see them doing it in a humid area where you can barely get any cooling from evaporation due to the air being satured, but that only covers the Deep South and Florida in the US. I don’t care if some company operating data centers claim that they’re aiming for closed loop cooling systems when the economics favor open loop cooling. Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome, the incentive to increase profit by using cooling towers will beat out the abstract good feeling you get from not using evaporative cooling towers and paying almost twice as much to reject heat from your data center which you only operate to make a profit.
- rapatel0 9mo agoMost new datacenters use closed loop systems now. the water just circulates.