Comment by cm2187
1 month ago
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?
1 month ago
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?
No, agriculture has fairly strict standards about the quality of the water, they can't use gray water to irrigate. Of course it will still work but depending on where you live the produce may then no longer be fit for human consumption.
You can use it for irrigating your lawn but not for vegetables, especially not if you plan on selling them. But 'light' gray water requires relatively little treatment before you can use it again, however this could still be quite expensive compared to just letting it go. I wonder if they've done any quantitative research on this that's public.
That's very interesting, thanks! I had no idea that legionella risk was a thing for data centers. This article mentions that to avoid the risk most data centers treat the water with disinfectants which are sometimes toxic:
https://www.scaleway.com/en/blog/making-the-energy-efficienc...
They're really nasty bacteria and once in a system they are hard to get rid of because then you have to heat everything to temperatures that the system normally might never reach.
That's why central heating systems that run 'low' every now and then stoke up to 60 degrees or more on the secondary circuit for tap water.
And data centers are the perfect location, endless 35 to 45 degree water. Cooling towers are the main problem for this, another is aerosols of water that has been sitting in the sun for a while, for instance in a garden hose exposed to the sun.
This is America. Our toilets use _clean potable water_ to flush our shit.
Drinking water from the mains is metered, so it is observable from the business perspective. Life finds a way. Heat exchangers and datacenter plumbing absolutely breed life and put things into the water that were not there when it was pumped in.
Imagine if a datacenter used a shady supplier of pipe that used, say, lead in their alloy. Do you want that datacenter grey water going into crops?
Do you think that water that the water that flows from kitchen sink and water that flushes in the toilet in normal house/apartment come from different pipes in any other place of the world?
Many homes around the world do in fact have separate drinking water taps in the kitchen.
But yes, it rarely enters the building via different pipes. I'm sure that's a thing somewhere too.
The water from the lake isn't drinking water either, it is contaminated with all sort of stuff including dead animals and animals excrements. But it doesn't mean it is not suitable for agriculture.