They use adiabatic gas coolers on their refrigeration systems. Basically there is a perpetually wet piece of media that air runs through before it gets to the refrigeration coils. By running through that wet media you precool the air basically down to the current dewpoint by evaporating water and therefore you’re cooling the refrigeration coils with colder air which leads to more efficient opperation and reduces the size of the gas coolers required. From what I’ve seen a lot of these datacenters are also switching to CO2 based refirgeration systems which are generally better except the low critical temp of CO2 mean that their efficiency starts to drop quickly once the ambient temp gets much above 80F. Using adiabatic coolers mostly removes that shortfall.
Comment on Imagine not being able to shower, because AI slop generator machines need that water!
ansiz@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I don’t get the news about these data centers guzzling water, where is the water going? If it’s for cooling, but that doesn’t destroy the water…
Canonical_Warlock@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Evaporative cooling.
Lord743@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Can’t they recycle it.
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Technically it gets recycled, by falling down in some other place.
whyNotSquirrel@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
By cooling it down? With what, water?
InputZero@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yes but that’s expensive. It’s a lot cheaper to just draw from the municipal supply and discharge it.
ansiz@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I know politicians are spineless but the obvious solution seems to be to keep increasing the cost of using water until the data centers switched to a closed system. Don’t most nuclear power plants recycle most of the water they use?
Charging the data centers more would also be a nice increase in revenue for the local municipal area