Data centers don't just heat up the water and return it - they evaporate the water into the atmosphere (yes, I know, the H2O still exists, but it's in a far less usable form when it's gaseous atmospheric H2O)
Data centers don't just heat up the water and return it - they evaporate the water into the atmosphere (yes, I know, the H2O still exists, but it's in a far less usable form when it's gaseous atmospheric H2O)
Do you have a source?
Just what I've been told by people in the industry. I too would love to see more solid data.
I'm genuinely curious how recondensing would work. It seems like a Rube Goldberg machine to me. To recondense the water vapor, you would need to move a large amount of heat out of the water vapor into a heat sink so that it could cool down to the boiling point and undergo a phase change. What would that sink be, and how would you move the heat into it fast enough?
Air is the obvious answer, but if you are dumping heat into the air, why would you do it by evaporating and then condensing water, rather than transferring it directly (e.g. via a heat exchanger and fan)?