Hi there everyone,
Let me start this by saying that this is an honest question. I figure nobody would be better suited to answer my question than a group laser-focused on the negatives of the technology.
I see these types of memes a lot and see statistics of gallons consumed in a lot of articles I read. What I don’t understand though is where the water goes that it can’t be reclaimed or naturally return from a gas to a liquid.
As a kid(long ago), I was taught of the cycle of rain and the conversion between gases and liquid. It’s my understanding that when a liquid is used to cool something, it also follows the same conversion process as it cools.
Could someone explain to me what’s going on in this process where the 264 billion gallons of water used in the meme do not return to a liquid state?
I would appreciate any insight into the process that seems to defy this cycle that I am missing. Like I said prior, my knowledge of this process ended in middle school science class so I’m confident that I’m missing something.
Thanks for your time!
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Future historians will just reiterate the same shit that has preceeded any man-made catastrophe. A relatively small group of men sought neverending power with bottomless greed at the expense of resources and everyone else.
It evaporates in cooling. A closed loop system would avoid this, but it’s more expensive, so we destroy ourselves instead.
so we destroy ourselves instead.
I think you mean we let a small, selfish minority destroy it for everyone else
Depending on where the figure is sourced, the water usage may include the electricity generation, in which case you might be using tons of water with a closed loop (data center) cooling system, because the power plant uses an open loop system. Open loop is wasteful, but if the climate is dry, it’s more effective because you get to reject the latent heat of vaporization of water, which is a shitload of energy. (That’s the technical term forgive my jargon.)
That’s insane. I simply assumed they were closed loop systems because it makes sense. When I worked with HVAC systems, that’s all they ever were.
Wow.
Open loop is basically “use evaporative cooling to reduce electricity use”. For example, you could spray water on your home AC condenser to boost efficiency, although home units obviously aren’t intended to be constantly wet. Cooling towers are designed to be constantly wet and their radiator structures are very different, but the concept is the same.
All because a few trillion-dollar companies want lower electricity bills. Fuck, humans can be such greedy assholes.
This is a really good video on the subject. I mean as long as I copied the URL correctly.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H_c6MWk7PQc&pp=ygURRGF0YSBjZW50ZXIgd2F0ZXI%3D
nah they will be having a field day with all the crazy fascism.
that’s if there’s anyone left after the burger reich is done.
As a kid (long ago), I was taught of the cycle of rain and the conversion between gases and liquid. It’s my understanding that when a liquid is used to cool something, it also follows the same conversion process as it cools.
Yeah the water used in evaporative cooling on the data canter roofs does later condense as rain somewhere again, but the issue is that it will be far away from the location by then, so that’s no relief for the local water network that is taxed by the demand.
https://www.joburgetc.com/news/ai-data-centers-fresh-water-usage-cooling-recycled/
TLDR: They use evaporative cooling, so the clean drinking water is taken from the water supply and distributed to the air. Yes, the rain cycle works and the water isn’t destroyed, but the water molecules are distributed places that are no longer readily available. Drinking water supplies like aquifers, reservoirs, etc. are depleted, but weather patterns do not necessarily replenish them, particularly weather patterns distorted by climate change.
Yeah I don’t like how water usage is coined as “usage”, as if it’s removed and never to be seen on the face of the Earth again. For AI centers using evaporative cooling, it evaporates. So yes it enters the atmosphere and the water cycle again. This is an issue where we already drink the river dry such as LA or the Colorado river basin. For closed loop cycles, it charges once and basically that’s it. There are always some losses due to leaks, maintenance, etc, so you may hear them say ‘it uses less than a golf course’. Let the downvotes commence!
Hahaha, future historians. Rich.
Copying from another thread on this, but the focus on water use over electricity and emissions of datacenters does not make sense. It’s just helping datacenter by focusing on the wrong environmental issue because they are not a major contributor to water use.
Agriculture, and animal agriculture specifically, are the super dominant water users. Even in water scarce places like the Colorado river
Animal agriculture also pollutes ground water, and at a far higher rate and frequency. They create toxic algae blooms are from the runoff which means high nitrate levels in the local water level. Cancer rates are elevated nearby animal farms
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935126006286
Meanwhile electrical usage is delaying fossil fuel plant closure, leading to new ones, leading to backup generator use, etc. Datacenters are projected to go from 5% of electricity use to 15%. I keep seeing 5x the number of posts on the water usage than emissions. It’s letting datacenters get away with their super high emissions with so much less attention to it
Yeah but Agriculture produces stuff we actually need instead of automating people’s jobs and child porn
Though not all agriculture is equal. We don’t need to be eating nearly so much meat, dairy, and so on though. Per capita consumption has gone through the roof in previous decades. If we are concerned about water, we should also be also reducing our consumption. For a number of other reasons too
The 264 billion gallons absorb enough energy from the data center to evaporate. They turn into a gaseous form and rise into the sky where they become clouds. The clouds will eventually precipitate and turn into rain, but it might take months and months, and it probably won’t happen in dry areas with low rainfall. It might even happen over the ocean, turning the clouds into undrinkable salty seawater.
I’m a bit uneducated on this, so maybe its a dumb question… But couldn’t saltwater be used for cooling as well? We have desalination plants, I’m sure there has gotta be a way to use the water for cooling and eliminate the freshwater problem completely, right? I’m assuming it is just that they don’t want to spend more money?
Salt water is really hard on plumbing. At best it could be used as a secondary cooling loop.
Even plastic or PVC plumbing?
Plastic plumbing is only useful a) up to a certain size since it’s not strong enough to support the weight and pressure beyond, and b) terrible at moving heat across, so it can’t be used in radiators and definitely not in on-die cooling blocks.
Metal pipes can be coated on the inside to prevent corrosion, but that coating also reduces the amount of heat that transfers out - basically a layer of insulation. This is a big issue that had to be overcome for liquid sodium cooling in reactors, but those don’t need to have a super thin copper plenum on a processor chip, it’s larger pipes moving a larger volume of liquid through a significantly higher temperature difference.
However, salt water in a secondary, or even tertiary, loop could be used. It would be a similar concept to reactors, where the primary loop is 100% closed and uses a coolant designed for the task, and that then transfers heat through a reverse-flow chiller that’s fed on the other side with salt water. The coolant pipes can be bare copper/aluminum/alloy for better heat transfer and the salt water side can be coated, and the surface area or flow volume just increased to compensate.
The downside though that can’t be avoided is that your data center now has to be very close to an ocean, and the salt in the air could also cause problems.
Very useful answer, thank you. I guess we need to invent some sort of vibranium pipes which have all the good properties.
It might even happen over the ocean, turning the clouds into undrinkable salty seawater.
Well, I mean, doesn’t water evaporate from the ocean constantly and then also become rain?
To be clear it’s still a huge problem due to redistribution issues especially in drought stricken areas, but I feel like the ocean is actually like the main source of freshwater precipitation globally, right?
Sure, but we don’t usually use rain for drinking. It first has to pass through the ground and be pumped up.
The problem is that data centers are basically skipping the one step where humans have access to the water.
I think they’re using potable drinking water too. So we pay for it to be treated before data centers use it.
Why.
Edit: yes I know, the reason is that it costs more money
If you want to have water evaporated, you want it to not contain too much gunk otherwise your “evaporation pot” will get muddy real quick (not defending ai, just giving their rational)
Water has to be balanced before being pumped through the facility, or it will corrode or calcify the piping. DCs use municipal water so they don’t have to cover the cost of balancing themselves.
I don’t think the amount of evaporation from the ocean increases based on how much water is in the ocean at a proportional rate.
Probably not, but we’re in luck! As data centers accelerate climate change we’ll get more evaporation as the average ocean temperature continues to climb
plus whatever anti-corosives and other [[accumulating] forever[?]] chemicals added that remain
I always assumed that distilled water (water turned to vapour, and re-condensed) is purified in the process.
That depends on how it’s recondensed. For distilled water you need a sterile collector.
Fine, I’ll do it.
It evaporates. They could cool it back down and reuse it, but that would increase costs even more and corporations like money.
Also, “but it remains part of the water cycle” is irrelevant. Of fucking course it does; we’re not talking about nuclear fusion here! But what matters isn’t how much water exists, it’s how much usable water exists and when it evaporates it stops being usable.
Isn’t the same true for nuclear power plants?
yes but we get value from power plants - power.
LLMs just suck up more power.
esptein class destroying the world and gas lighting that it is regular humans that cause world destruction while its themselves. always is always was
Put a straw in your hand.
Get a mouthful of ice cold water
Blow it through the straw out the other side.
Feel it cool your hand? See how its dispersed out to god knows the fuck where? Never returning in any significant volume to replenish the cup it was drawn from
Thats basically whats going on.
Billions of gallons of drinkable water, wasted because data centers didnt want to pay the extra cost for a closed loop cooling system. putting enormous strain on water systems that are already at or beyond their breaking points and are not able to replenish at even a fraction of the rate that they are being drained from.
It’s not an extra cent for a closed loop cooling system and your straw analogy is closer to closed loop in how it works. They use open loop because vaporising water takes a lot more energy than heating water. You get a lot of more cooled. The alternative is to run a ton more AC at lower efficiency since the hot side of the AC won’t be cooled fast enough.
They’re doing it to use less electricity since electricity is expensive. In a way, it’s a good thing. Until you factor in droughts
It goes nowhere - it’s dumb propaganda for dumb people who missed their 2nd grade.
