Last week Nona Technologies attended Future Bridge's 9th High-Density AI Data Center Cooling & Thermal Management Summit in Dallas. I left feeling more convinced that transparency and smart engineering are how we build enough data centers and build them responsibly.
The people building data centers want to get this right.
The firms building data centers are staffed with intelligent, insightful people who want to make the world a better place. They are your friends and neighbors, and they are wrestling with real infrastructure tradeoffs.
Everyone I spoke with wanted the efficiency of evaporative cooling, but many felt they could not choose it because the public would not accept any water consumption from a data center. The engineers understand that facility water is only one part of the system. The public conversation often does not.
Put four boundaries on the same page.
PUE and WUE are useful only when their boundaries are explicit. NREL and LBNL also use a source-water measure to show how electricity-related water can change the result.
- Site water
- Water withdrawn, consumed, and discharged at the data center, including cooling tower makeup and blowdown.
- Facility electricity
- Power used by IT equipment and the systems that move and reject heat. Cooling choices affect both.
- Source water
- Water associated with generating electricity. The result changes with grid mix and power-plant cooling.
- Local conditions
- Climate, water availability, sewer capacity, operating limits, and community priorities around a specific site.
Source-water framework: NREL and LBNL. Cooling tower process: U.S. Department of Energy.
Transparency is what gets communities and engineers onto the same page.
Communities are right to ask how much water a project will use and what that means locally. Operators should answer with site-specific assumptions, measured boundaries, and a clear account of the tradeoffs.
Minimizing onsite water by amplifying electricity demand can be the wrong move. So can treating any onsite water use as automatically acceptable. Showing the whole system is how communities and engineers can choose the best outcome for the facility, the grid, and the local water system.
Transparency and smart engineering are what we need to get the public on board.
Where blowdown recovery fits
For a facility using evaporative cooling, the recoverable stream is liquid cooling tower blowdown, not water already lost through evaporation. NONA RECOVER uses Ion Concentration Polarization (ICP), an MIT-patented alternative to reverse osmosis, to recover 90% of cooling tower blowdown on site. Site fit and savings still depend on measured operating inputs.
Want to continue the conversation in person? See where to meet Nona next.