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Yeah that's what I don't get about all of this. Why can't they recycle this water if it's just being used for cooling. Why must it always be fresh water?
They evaporate it using cooling towers. Because it's the cheapest way to shed heat.
Because recycling the water would require condensing it, and the laws of thermodynamics necessitates that the energy that was taken away into the water by the phase change from water to vapor must be taken back out of the vapor in order to change it back into water.
That's to say, in order to get the water back that was evaporated to cool something, you must cool the water the same amount that it cooled your other thing. This makes recovering the water completely pointless as you have to do the exact same amount of cooling again to recover it.
Data centers use evaporative cooling because it's cheap. Not recovering the water is what makes it cheap. They can use cooling methods that don't rely on disposing of water to the atmosphere (like heat pumps), but it's not cheap.
This is where regulations need to step in. The extra cost of non-evaporarive cooling is not going to make or break the datacenter, but it might cut into the CEO's bonus. Make them pay for it! They've got the money.
This is the part where you need to realize that regulations only come into play long after devastating impacts occur and can't be denied any longer (or, more accurately, until they can be denied again. See, the state of anti-trust in the US). Capitalism only exists because it can foist externalities onto the public. And capitalism will do anything to avoid paying for the externalities that allow them to "generate" profits.
Many of these facilities are using evaporation coolers. Which means the water just evaporates. And that ends up raining into the ocean later.
They’re going to cheap out in whatever way they can. Using a different cooling system, or using non-potable water isn’t going to be done voluntarily.
It does have a touch of fear mongering. The water wouldn't even be contaminated.
They evaporate it using cooling towers. Because it's the cheapest way to shed heat.