Hi there everyone,

Let me start this by saying that this is an honest question. I figure nobody would be better suited to answer my question than a group laser-focused on the negatives of the technology.

I see these types of memes a lot and see statistics of gallons consumed in a lot of articles I read. What I don’t understand though is where the water goes that it can’t be reclaimed or naturally return from a gas to a liquid.

As a kid(long ago), I was taught of the cycle of rain and the conversion between gases and liquid. It’s my understanding that when a liquid is used to cool something, it also follows the same conversion process as it cools.

Could someone explain to me what’s going on in this process where the 264 billion gallons of water used in the meme do not return to a liquid state?

I would appreciate any insight into the process that seems to defy this cycle that I am missing. Like I said prior, my knowledge of this process ended in middle school science class so I’m confident that I’m missing something.

Thanks for your time!

  • Grail@multiverse.soulism.netEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    The 264 billion gallons absorb enough energy from the data center to evaporate. They turn into a gaseous form and rise into the sky where they become clouds. The clouds will eventually precipitate and turn into rain, but it might take months and months, and it probably won’t happen in dry areas with low rainfall. It might even happen over the ocean, turning the clouds into undrinkable salty seawater.

    • Carnelian@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 month ago

      It might even happen over the ocean, turning the clouds into undrinkable salty seawater.

      Well, I mean, doesn’t water evaporate from the ocean constantly and then also become rain?

      To be clear it’s still a huge problem due to redistribution issues especially in drought stricken areas, but I feel like the ocean is actually like the main source of freshwater precipitation globally, right?

    • GloriousGasHole@piefed.socialEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      I’m a bit uneducated on this, so maybe its a dumb question… But couldn’t saltwater be used for cooling as well? We have desalination plants, I’m sure there has gotta be a way to use the water for cooling and eliminate the freshwater problem completely, right? I’m assuming it is just that they don’t want to spend more money?

      • Omgpwnies@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 month ago

        Salt water is really hard on plumbing. At best it could be used as a secondary cooling loop.

          • Omgpwnies@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            19 days ago

            Plastic plumbing is only useful a) up to a certain size since it’s not strong enough to support the weight and pressure beyond, and b) terrible at moving heat across, so it can’t be used in radiators and definitely not in on-die cooling blocks.

            Metal pipes can be coated on the inside to prevent corrosion, but that coating also reduces the amount of heat that transfers out - basically a layer of insulation. This is a big issue that had to be overcome for liquid sodium cooling in reactors, but those don’t need to have a super thin copper plenum on a processor chip, it’s larger pipes moving a larger volume of liquid through a significantly higher temperature difference.

            However, salt water in a secondary, or even tertiary, loop could be used. It would be a similar concept to reactors, where the primary loop is 100% closed and uses a coolant designed for the task, and that then transfers heat through a reverse-flow chiller that’s fed on the other side with salt water. The coolant pipes can be bare copper/aluminum/alloy for better heat transfer and the salt water side can be coated, and the surface area or flow volume just increased to compensate.

            The downside though that can’t be avoided is that your data center now has to be very close to an ocean, and the salt in the air could also cause problems.

            • skujcici7755@lemmy.zip
              1·
              19 days ago

              Very useful answer, thank you. I guess we need to invent some sort of vibranium pipes which have all the good properties.

  • grue@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 month ago

    It evaporates. They could cool it back down and reuse it, but that would increase costs even more and corporations like money.

    Also, “but it remains part of the water cycle” is irrelevant. Of fucking course it does; we’re not talking about nuclear fusion here! But what matters isn’t how much water exists, it’s how much usable water exists and when it evaporates it stops being usable.