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by jatora 28 days ago
Data center water use is a fairly separate topic from what this article covers. Related of course but the conversation on USE centers around actual volume use, not contaminants.
2 comments

It’s not a separate topic though, as this article shows. A closed loop system can still mess up the water supply, because (in this case) it wasn’t fully closed.
Discharge, is part of "water usage". Arguing otherwise is embarrassing.
According to the article this is a closed loop cooling system, once it’s up and running it doesn’t use any water. They run water through it during installation and that’s the discharge that they found bacteria in.
You can have a “closed loop system” but you need to shed heat somewhere and that is either by air cooling drawing tons of electricity, or evaporation that draws tons of water.
I’m pretty sure that “closed loop” in this context would mean that the water is recirculated and not evaporated.
From the links in the article, it looks like this DC runs giant heat exchangers to dump the heat to air.
> air cooling drawing tons of electricity

Reference? What's the efficiency of the systems like used here?

Air cooled chillers are generally used in a closed loop system. A coefficient of performance (COP) of 4 is reasonable to expect, which means 1 watt of electricity to remove 4 watts of heat.
I could vibe code 1:6
Not sure if you're being purposely intellectually dishonest or just unaware, but the common thread on the water usage argument is literally about quantity of usage and rising prices for local areas. So as I said, somewhat related, but still two completely separate discussion topics.