Many firms is likely to be proud of their knowledge middle water utilization effectiveness (WUE) outcomes by merely beating the common, which is about 1.8 liters per kilowatt hour (L/kWh). However for organizations with a particular stage of dedication to knowledge middle sustainability, doing higher than most isn’t sufficient. They may intention larger by concentrating on a WUE fee of 0 L/kWh – which is to say, they’d run knowledge facilities that devour no water in any respect.
That is the promise behind water-free knowledge facilities. The query is: How practical is it to function a facility that consumes zero water, and what are the potential tradeoffs?
How Do Knowledge Facilities Use Water?
Knowledge facilities have a tendency to make use of giant volumes of water for cooling. Water dissipates the warmth generated by servers and different IT tools, sometimes by means of evaporation. Which means that a continuing provide of recent water is required to exchange the water that turns into vapor throughout the knowledge middle cooling course of.
Excessive charges of water consumption are a problem, in fact, as a result of water is a scarce pure useful resource – and it’s changing into scarcer in lots of areas as groundwater reservoirs come below rising pressure.
That is why decreasing water consumption is often a key purpose, alongside decreased vitality utilization, inside knowledge middle sustainability methods. It’s additionally why calculating water utilization effectiveness (WUE), which measures the effectivity of water utilization relative to the quantity of IT tools inside an information middle, has develop into a typical apply for knowledge middle operators.
Introducing Water-Free Knowledge Facilities
Typically, sustainability targets middle on decreasing water consumption by bettering the effectivity of cooling techniques or by adopting methods like closed-loop cooling, which recirculates the water used for cooling, avoiding the necessity to replenish it constantly.
Most companies are completely happy if they’ll cut back water utilization, even when they don’t come near eliminating it completely. However to maximise water sustainability, some knowledge middle operators intention to keep away from the necessity for water fully.
That is why some within the trade are taking pictures for water-free knowledge facilities, which means services that use no water in any respect for cooling functions. (The buildings would possibly nonetheless use small quantities of water in locations like bogs, however the consumption can be negligible in comparison with the water sometimes used for knowledge middle cooling.)
Microsoft is probably the most distinguished instance, saying it can pilot several water-free data centers beginning in 2026. Knowledge middle operators like NOVVA and Vertiv have additionally outlined ideas for knowledge facilities with water-free cooling techniques, though they haven’t made particular commitments to implementing them.
How Do Water-Free Knowledge Facilities Work?
To construct a water-free knowledge middle, you want a method of cooling IT tools with out utilizing water. A method to do that is liquid immersion cooling, which makes use of non-conductive fluid to dissipate warmth from knowledge facilities. That’s a really energy-efficient cooling methodology, nevertheless it’s costly to implement.
One other, extra inexpensive method is to make use of typical mechanical cooling techniques – primarily the identical forms of chilled-air A/C techniques you’d discover in a house or workplace. The draw back of this method is that these techniques devour loads of electrical energy, so companies could also be buying and selling water sustainability for vitality sustainability.
For knowledge middle operators that may supply all or most of their vitality from renewables, nonetheless, mechanical cooling is likely to be a compelling different to water-hungry cooling techniques.
It’s price noting, too, that though mechanical cooling techniques are usually not very environment friendly as a result of they don’t focus chilled air straight at places the place warmth collects, extra refined designs can mitigate this challenge. To enhance effectivity, cool air may very well be compelled by means of sealed server cupboards, for instance, reasonably than circulating by means of a complete server room.
To enhance effectivity much more, mechanical cooling may very well be built-in into direct-to-chip cooling techniques. Conventional direct-to-chip cooling makes use of water to dissipate warmth from IT tools. However hybrid techniques can as a substitute use a fluid that’s mechanically chilled, eliminating the necessity to flow into water continually by means of the system.
This seems to be the method that Microsoft is utilizing, since its description of water-free knowledge facilities discusses mechanical cooling along with “chip-level cooling options” – nevertheless it’s laborious to say for certain as a result of the corporate has launched little technical element about how the cooling techniques will work.
Will Water-Free Knowledge Facilities Develop into Widespread?
The associated fee and complexity of implementing energy-efficient water-free cooling techniques imply that we’re unlikely to see widespread rollout of information facilities that obtain zero water utilization. However the know-how obligatory to construct such services already exists. Getting there’s a query of choosing the appropriate cooling system designs.
