Comment by jacquesm
1 month ago
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.