[xhkkffbf]

This isn't really about using water as much as dealing with all of the heat that comes out of computation. The water is just the simplest way to dispose of the heat.

Isn't there some better way we can, perhaps, turn some of the heat back into something useful? Maybe heat a building? Or turn it back into electricity. It doesn't have to be an efficient conversion because it's now 100% wasted.

[cogman10]

> Maybe heat a building?

I'm a big fan of district heating, but it's something that needs to be built before the datacenter is. It also doesn't really work well if the datacenter isn't in an already cool region.

> Or turn it back into electricity.

The temps aren't high enough to do that easily. You need boiling water to generate electricity, and chips don't like running at or above 100C.

It's possible you could use a heat pump to turn hot water into boiling water, but that will stop working when temps get out of band. You might be able do it with a sterling engine, but you'd, ironically, need a supply of cool water to keep those running.

[jodrellblank]

> "You need boiling water to generate electricity"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_vapour_turbine

[fruitworks]

the efficiency of converting it to electricity would be low, due to low absolute temperature difference and thus carnot effeciency.

I think it could be higher with germanium semiconductors, as you could run them at a higher temp and get superheated steam