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this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
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A Boring Dystopia
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I don't understand why AI data centers would CONSUME water. Once they fill up their chiller loops, then... that's it, right?
It's hard for me to imagine them relying on the temperature of the incoming water, and dumping all the warm water as discharge.
They're probably using cooling towers, which cool through evaporation. They should be using reclaimed though.
As long as it is cheaper to buy water, then evaporate it, big firms will continue to do so.
With a COP of around 15 and up it is difficult to argue with the economy of this.
Local regulation would be required, but that would need politicians who don't suck.
This is the right answer. They use evaporative cooling. Which does save a lot of power so they can claim to be "green".
Hmm, I wonder if that plays into the wild and frequent thunderstorms in Texas now.
Its got to be the data centers or global warming overall (and its shifting of the Jetstream's).
I worked 10 years at a data center, all that water is recycled - it is very carefully chemically balanced so as to not corrode the pipes and pumps, no they do not use it once and dump it out.
But it does spoil and evaporate doesn't it? So it's still a continuous demand that's not sustainable in that part of the world.
From what I've seen it's "not worth the effort or expense" to reuse the water. Some of them literally just send tap water through the cooling loops and then into the sewer drains
Because the massive stacks of high-powered chips that they use, tend to get very hot. They don't use the kind of computers that work through passive cooling.
I say, as my Laptop burns into my lap.