The prevalence of data centers is rapidly increasing around the globe, and demand for the centers continues to rise each year as companies require reliable ways to manage the sheer amount of data used for remote work, e-commerce, streaming services, etc. The benefits of data centers are many—improved security, greater reliability and productivity to name a few—but they are very energy intensive, and as global temperatures rise, they are becoming less efficient. It’s imperative that we create solutions to make these facilities more sustainable.
To work properly and efficiently, data centers—along with oil refineries and large-scale commercial and industrial facilities—require huge amounts of energy and/or water to cool their systems, creating significant challenges in areas lacking dependable energy grids or facing water scarcity issues. Data centers currently contribute about two percent of global carbon emissions and will reach 14% by 2040, according to the United States Department of Energy. As a result, the demand for sustainable cooling processes is rising considerably, as failure to implement such processes threatens to make our planet hotter as well as undermine facilities’ pledges to rein in their emissions.
Corporate giants and data center owners are aiming to become energy and/or water neutral by 2030 to meet their ESG goals, however, these goals cannot be satisfied using current cooling approaches. Arcadis, in collaboration with Tomorrow Water, has developed a highly unique and innovative cooling concept which uses recycled water as the heat sink in a completely closed loop system to make cooling more sustainable.
This patent pending cooling technology significantly reduces energy demand (more than 90% depending upon locations) compared to air cooling. It eliminates water losses, generates no waste stream (blowdown), and requires no chemical addition (biocide, antiscalant) compared to evaporative cooling (cooling towers). Recycled water, which replaces potable water in the cooling system, can then be completely recovered and returned to the community for beneficial uses such as landscape irrigation and toilet flushing, improving quality of life for nearby communities and creating an appealing and highly sustainable solution for data centers, refineries and large commercial facilities located in water- or energy-stressed areas.
For every 2,000 tons of cooling needed in a data center, our approach will reduce energy use by 11,000,000 kWh per year, which will save approximately $1.5-2 million annually compared to air cooling, reduce CO2 emissions by 50,000 tons per year compared to air cooling, and save 20 million gallons of water annually compared to evaporative cooling. Our approach can be used in new projects and easily retrofitted into the existing cooling approaches with minor modifications, and as stated above, will provide major advances in reducing data centers’ and other facilities’ emissions.
If you’d like to learn more about this topic, I hope you can join us at the American Water Works Association’s ACE23 on June 14 for my presentation on our cooling process, along with presentations by my colleagues about data center water demands, challenges and opportunities. You may also reach me at Ufuk.Erdal@arcadis.com for further information.
