What do datacenters need large volumes of running water for? Can they not do a continuous loop? It’s for cooling computers, right? That can’t be done with a closed loop of water?
A closed loop just moves away the heat, you still need to cool the water, else it keeps rising in temperature until it doesn’t cool enough. On desktops this can be achieved with fans, which isn’t surprising as waterless setups of fans can already cool down most desktop CPUs. On a data center (and power plants), this is not feasible as they generate too much heat. They would need massive fans and would raise the air temperature like crazy.
My next thought would be to find a use for the heat; colocate the data center with some other facility that needs massive quantities of heat. I remember something about a spa that heated its pools with computers (I think mining bitcoin, but still). I’ve also been curious if heat pumps could get hot enough to bake bread at industrial scales. Pump heat out of a data center and into a bigass bread oven?
It takes more work to avoid salt buildup, but you can evaporate saltwater as a place to dump heat, and we aren’t gonna run out of saltwater any time soon. 'Course, only so many places have saltwater access.
EDIT: You evaporate enough water for cooling, you can increase rainfall somewhat in the local area, which boosts crop growth measurably. I remember reading an article about nuclear power plants that use evaporative cooling producing that effect.
kagis
The growing prevalence of clean energy raises the question of possible associated externalities. This article studies the effects of nuclear power plant development (and, as a result, the increased amount of water in the atmosphere from evaporative cooling systems) on nearby crop yields and finds that an average nuclear power plant increases local soybean yields by 2 and corn yields by 1 percent.
The problem with using salt water isn’t salt buildup, it’s that it’s corrosive and will drastically shorten the lifespan of any equipment exposed to it.
You don’t pipe salt water through the data center. You have a heat exchanger that touches the salt water.
Also, good luck sourcing salt water in Illinois.
How about water usage rates that penalize bulk consumers instead of giving them cheaper rates?
Woah woah woah. Those billion dollar companies are investing in our town, that’s why we are giving them the equivalent of millions of dollars a year for free. -s
Might be better to not allow them in the first place…
I definitely agree that if the logistics don’t make any sense then you shouldn’t build them there.
~Side note: this is also why I think Florida, Nevada, and Arizona shouldn’t have hockey teams. It’s an affront to nature.~
As much as I am the Florida and Vegas hater that I am when it comes to hockey, the seasons are played so late into spring these days almost every team but Winnipeg is going to be affronting nature. Ill give you that florida humidity and heat must really be the worst of the worst though.
All water is drinking water if you’re brave enough
