Anyone who thinks modern data centers don’t use recirculated water can safely have their opinions summarily discarded.

Betelbuddy a day ago | parent | next [-]

Data centers consume...a lot...of water by design, recirculated water, does not means no water consumption. Water must be continuously added in evaporative cooling systems used by many data centers.

[1] - Cooling towers reject heat through evaporation, which uses water, not just recirculates it. Evaporated water is lost to the atmosphere and must be replaced with "make-up" water. As a result, recirculating cooling loops still require new water input to make up evaporation and blowdown losses.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooling_tower

	▲	15155 20 hours ago \| parent [-]
		..so outlaw cooling towers and use dry coolers.. what?

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b40d-48b2-979e a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Anyone who thinks that modern data centers don't evaporate their "recirculated FRESH water" straight into the ocean can safely have their opinions summarily discarded.

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estimator7292 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Please google "datacenter evaporative cooling" and then re-evaluate

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15155 20 hours ago | parent [-]

Whoa: is this the only possible form of cooling?

What if there were a cooler that somehow didn't evaporate water, you might even call it a "dry cooler" - that would be a sweet invention. This might even be required in areas where adiabatic cooling isn't effective (humid climates)!

	▲	MathMonkeyMan 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Even if the ambient relative humidity is near 100%, water's latent heat of vaporization is nothing to shake a stick at. I like the idea of a giant heat pump into the ground, but heat exchangers are expensive and so is digging.