Comment on Advocates raise alarm over Pfas pollution from datacenters amid AI boom
JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 4 days agoThank you for such an informational comment. My comment was wildly tongue-in-cheek but apparently it didn’t come across that way.
I didn’t know evaporative cooling was in use or even particularly effective for data centers. They generate a lot of heat that needs to be dealt with. I would think that modern HVAC systems would be so much more effective at that scale. Essentially since most colo facilities I’ve been to have cool air pumped in under the raised floor and return goes up.
Also every colo I’ve been in has been pretty strict about hot aisle/cold management and keeping unused rack units blocked off.
dragonfly4933@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
You seem reasonable and don’t deserve the downvotes.
Evaporative cooling is mostly used in hyperscale facilities, so most places you would ever visit would usually be cooled the typical way.
It’s cheaper because running a compressor costs quite a lot of power, even modern efficient systems still cost more to operate than pumping water out of the ground at near zero cost.
It is also difficult to find information on this topic since these large companies want to keep this information on the down low, that they are consuming a disproportionate amount of ground water.
In a lot of the US, individuals depend on ground water for their needs with their own pumps. It has started occurring that large facilities are built and it starts affecting nearby residents. Sometimes it causes a significant drop in water quality. Over time, they might not be able to get water from their existing well because millions of gallons were extracted for cooling a data center.
The public would be probably be extra pissed if they found out about this.