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this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2025
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Why are data centers so thirsty anyway? Can't cooling systems just reuse water in a closed loop?
Evaporative cooling needs less water mass and less surface area for the same cooling effect. They could simply use bigger heat sinks outside the building and have a bigger water cooling system to make it closed loop, but they don't want to do that.
I think evaporative cooling is more effective.
Right, that's what they said. For a closed loop, because it's less "effective", you need a much larger system. It's more expensive to build and requires a much larger footprint and corporations like Amazon would rather save a penny than do anything to reduce their harm.
They absolutely can run closed loop. It does not cool as well as evaporative cooling (it takes MASSIVE heat to evaporate water) but it can work if designed right with large system capacity and big radiators. Trouble is it's likely more expensive than pissing away the water and we know all that matters is bottom line.
No, usually the water doesn't cool down fast enough. Trying to reuse it just slowly heats it up, until either the water or the servers evaporate.
their servers evaporating sounds like a good deal to me
Evaporate chilling