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Comment by skiing_crawling | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand the water argument? I thought places like data centers would use something akin a closed loop and a radiator. Are they taking water from the town pipe, heating it once, and then launching it into the sun? Is there some other use for the water other than cooling?

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Apparently, data centers typically use evaporative cooling (I guess like a Swamp Cooler but on a whole different scale). This is cheaper than using compressed systems like we use on our homes. The water evaporates.

At a global level the water stays around but at a local level it "vanishes into thin air".

Most AI data centres use evaporative cooling. One of the linked sources talks about this; that 7 billion cubic metres metric is how much water gets evaporated into the air. (which makes that water no longer usable for drinking/watering crops/etc)

Don't forget about my favorite part of chilled water loops—the toxic chemicals that lowest bidders are contracted to dispose of.

Source: Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI)

> Evaporation Process: Roughly 80% of the water evaporates, cooling the servers, while minerals, microorganisms, and chemical additives (like anti-corrosion or anti-scaling agents) remain in the remaining 20% liquid, which is later discharged.

A large portion of data centers use open loop cooling. That is to say evaporative cooling. So they take fresh drinking water, make it hot, and dump it in the air. It's a lot cheaper than closed loop cooling.

A "large portion" of data centers needs to be quantified.

Particularly, newer data centers are much more likely to used closed loop systems. And, the bigger they are, the more likely they're on closed loop.

I’d like to see some evidence of that, adding evaporative cooling towers to a chilled water loop can almost double the COP. I don’t see datacenter operators foregoing much cheaper opex unless they’re in a water-critical area.

Yeah, this article is full of misinformation. The water argument is only one example.

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