Data center water use is a fairly separate topic from what this article covers. Related of course but the conversation on USE centers around actual volume use, not contaminants.

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lostlogin an hour ago | parent | next [-]

It’s not a separate topic though, as this article shows. A closed loop system can still mess up the water supply, because (in this case) it wasn’t fully closed.

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theyreallhere 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Discharge, is part of "water usage". Arguing otherwise is embarrassing.

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jcheng 2 hours ago | parent [-]

According to the article this is a closed loop cooling system, once it’s up and running it doesn’t use any water. They run water through it during installation and that’s the discharge that they found bacteria in.

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jazzyjackson 2 hours ago | parent [-]

You can have a “closed loop system” but you need to shed heat somewhere and that is either by air cooling drawing tons of electricity, or evaporation that draws tons of water.

	▲	techbro92 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I’m pretty sure that “closed loop” in this context would mean that the water is recirculated and not evaporated.
	▲	wiml 28 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		From the links in the article, it looks like this DC runs giant heat exchangers to dump the heat to air.