Comment by ktm5j
1 day ago
The water used by data centers are either closed loop, meaning that they recirculate a set amount of water.. or the water evaporates, and my understandingis they don't use potable water for those systems. I might be wrong, but I don't think data centers aren't destroying potable water.
The water is reutilized, a big reason is the difficuty to filter new incoming water because of impurities and uncertainty about quality (e.g. winter times make the river water very muddy and difficult to filter).
Second because is because adding water is a cost, whereas reuse existing water is simpler and saves money. There are always losses of water, however these are neglectible.
Not mentioned here but for more extreme cases of devices cooling is done with distilled water (zero minerals) and the whole device works submerged under this water, the hot water isn't thrown away because it distilled water takes a lot of effort to remove the minerals and effort to keep them out, so the closed loop is very efficient.
Here's one in Oregon from today's San Francisco newspaper. If they recycle, it's still loses enough equivalent to 4000 people a year. Maybe that's worth it, but it reads like it's not enough for their future plans. It's not like the city population in question has changed that much historically so there's some future expansion of something planned. That water sounds very pristine since they are going to have to take over national park land. https://www.sfgate.com/national-parks/article/mount-hood-wat...