FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) — A geologist with the Indiana Geological & Water Survey weighed in on data centers’ potential impact on groundwater following the release of a report claiming the Great Lakes region is unprepared for increasing water use demands.
According to a report released by the Alliance for the Great Lakes, a single large data center can use more than 1 million gallons of water per day, equivalent to what 12,000 Americans would use in the same timeframe.
How data centers use water
Most of the water used for data centers is for cooling the thousands of servers working 24/7 in the center. Currently, the most common method for cooling in data centers is evaporative cooling. The process of evaporation allows cooling of a surface. This is why sweating cools us off. The problem with evaporative cooling being the most widely-used method is that most of the water being used goes into the air and not back to the source in which it is coming from. This means that whichever water source a data center is using is seeing less water return than was originally taken. Most data centers use public water sources.
There are other ways to use water for cooling servers. Liquid immersion and direct-to-chip cooling consume less water by directly cooling equipment on contact, but the water used can be contaminated. While more efficient, these methods would put water quality into question…