this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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If it's just for cooling, wouldn't they just be able to pull water directly from a lake and then return the same water into the lake? Why is any consumption happening?
Dirty water is bad for cooling equipment
Well, building on that question, why do they need a constant supply of clean water? My desktop PC has a water cooler, and it just recirculates the same water.
Because that's expensive to build on this scale. They'd have to cool the water back down again.
It's cheaper to just run cold tapwater in at a fast rate, and dump the hot water intothe sewer.
Which is why we need laws that go after industries that use insane amounts of water, if we don't it causes shortages and everyone's rate to go up
There should be a cost to corporations using municipal water supplies for purposes unrelated to direct consumption for drinking, cooking, washing, toilets. You shouldn't be able to use it for cooling only, and you shouldn't be able to bottle and resell it.
We should make it exponentially more expensive the more you use.
Sounds like they are using evaporation cooling towers for the air chillers.
It’s evaporative cooling, big cooling towers
Power plants use lake water directly for cooling - they use a heat exchanger
The water isn't being consumed. It's going through the same process all the water in the city is going through.
Pulled from the river, cleaned, used for cooling at the data centers, and returned to the river via the waste water system.
The only loss is the energy/resources to treat the water.