Comment by jacquesm
1 month ago
It's not a stupid question but: technically, after passing through Google's facility that is now gray water, and you can't use that for agriculture or any other 'common usage' without a whole raft of work and you can't just dump it into the aquifer either.
But if it just went through some heat exchangers, it's not like if it was dirty? As far as I know, nuclear power plants return the water they consume to the rivers they extracted it from.
Heat exchangers could easily contaminate the water. If they're not kept hot enough they could be breeding ground for Legionella and a whole raft of other bacteria. Clean water is science, not just a matter of bulk pumping stuff from one place to another (though that's definitely a part of it). Water treatment plants are complex and have a ton of QA on their product. You can't just run it into a factory and pretend it is the same stuff going in modulo some increase in temperature.
But you are talking about drinking water. I would be surprised if they even use that for cooling. But any non human consumption use of water (like agriculture) should happily use that water, shouldn't it?
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Do legionella multiply faster in a heat exchanger than a river?
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Don't they reuse the water by cooling it outside the data center? Most power plants do that.
Yes, but that does not mean it is now clean water. Anything could happen between the moment Google ingests it and spits it back out, the assumption that it is 'just' a little warmer is nice but it misses the option of for instance contamination from a secondary circuit or various substances leaching into the water used as a coolant.
But I mean, the water is not discarded, it is constantly reused. I assume some is lost over time, but surely it is minimal?
So where toes the "not clean water" go then usually in such a setup?
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If they can return it to the river how can't it flow to agriculture?
It’s gray water, and just as how I can’t dump gray water from my RV camper into the river, neither can a data center. After running through a heat exchanger there can be all kinds of crap in that water.
Data centers and power plants can and do return cooling water from a river back to the same river but warmer. What do you think is inside their heat exchangers but metal and water?
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