Post #4222601

2026-07-21 11:01 UTC

@tante@tldr.nettime.org @hzulla@infosec.exchange I always assumed datacentres would circulate their supply of coolant, which would probably double the power requirements but largely obviate their need for fresh water. Maybe they did, some thirty years ago when I visited a couple that were completely air-cooled and no where near bodies of water to dump their waste heat (and water) into?

Replies (2)

@orva@social.orva.fi 2026-07-21 12:16

@jerrej@mastodon.social @tante@tldr.nettime.org @hzulla@infosec.exchange AFAIK they have closed loop from servers to the cooling unit. The cooling unit transfers heat to a water supply which boils away, which cools the closed loop.

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@ahltorp@mastodon.nu 2026-07-21 15:10

@jerrej@mastodon.social @tante@tldr.nettime.org @hzulla@infosec.exchange In sane datacentres, there is a closed loop. Even for sanely built datacentres, though, there is a thing called emergency cooling, where municipal freshwater is fed into the cooling system and then afterwards dumped into the municipal waste water. This is not how you should build the normal cooling system, but these companies are just utter bastards, so they use permanent emergency cooling and evaporate instead of dump.

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