But it’s not like all the water just disappears after it enters the data centres.
It doesn’t disappear as such, but it won’t be in usable form.
The reason they want to make use of the water isn’t as a heat transfer fluid to something else (well, they might use some water for that too, but that’s not what’s driving the consumption). They’re evaporating it. The phase change from liquid water to water vapor consumes energy.
So now you’ve got a bunch of water vapor blowing away in the wind, which you’re not going to be drinking. It’s not gone, as it’ll turn into rain or some other form of precipitation somewhere else, but that’ll be somewhere else.
Same thing some thermal power plants do — you probably have seen images of those nuclear power plants with cooling towers, and other types of thermal power plants will do the same, coal, oil, gas.
That being said, they don’t really need freshwater, as long as they can set up some sort of evaporation system that uses seawater for cooling, doesn’t clog up from salt or other stuff building up. More of a hassle to deal with than freshwater, but it still evaporates. The UK being an archipelago, seawater is not in terribly short supply.
I don’t know if the coolant in fridges undergoes phase change between gas or liquid or just pressure change and stays a gas, but if it does a phase change, sure.
A gaseous refrigerant is compressed so its pressure and temperature rise. When operating as a heater in cold weather, the warmed gas flows to a heat exchanger in the indoor space where some of its thermal energy is transferred to that indoor space, causing the gas to condense into a liquid. The liquified refrigerant flows to a heat exchanger in the outdoor space where the pressure falls, the liquid evaporates and the temperature of the gas falls.
It doesn’t disappear as such, but it won’t be in usable form.
The reason they want to make use of the water isn’t as a heat transfer fluid to something else (well, they might use some water for that too, but that’s not what’s driving the consumption). They’re evaporating it. The phase change from liquid water to water vapor consumes energy.
Evaporative coolers work on this principle.
So now you’ve got a bunch of water vapor blowing away in the wind, which you’re not going to be drinking. It’s not gone, as it’ll turn into rain or some other form of precipitation somewhere else, but that’ll be somewhere else.
Same thing some thermal power plants do — you probably have seen images of those nuclear power plants with cooling towers, and other types of thermal power plants will do the same, coal, oil, gas.
That being said, they don’t really need freshwater, as long as they can set up some sort of evaporation system that uses seawater for cooling, doesn’t clog up from salt or other stuff building up. More of a hassle to deal with than freshwater, but it still evaporates. The UK being an archipelago, seawater is not in terribly short supply.
Thanks for the explanation.
So this is effectively like half of a fridges coolant system, but they’re missing the bit where they condense the coolant back and reuse it?
I don’t know if the coolant in fridges undergoes phase change between gas or liquid or just pressure change and stays a gas, but if it does a phase change, sure.
kagis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump
Yeah, sounds like it does do a phase change.