re: How real is a water scarcity threat, re: Building Data Centers?

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artificial intelligence infrastructure,

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Elon Musk's data centers being built on the moon and will not need the two major scarcity resources that data centers on Earth are depleting:

1. Water - temps in space are low and eliminate the need for cooling water for the cpu's
2. Power - Elon will use solar

It's cheaper for Elon to build on the moon. Elon can pull this off and everyone else will be 2nd to him.

What pisses me off:
The data centers are using our drinking water. They don't want to use the River water because it's added cost to refine. That is the law needing to be passed. Equal playing field - no one grandfathered in ALL DATA CENTERS must use oceans, rivers...NOT drinking water.

It's a big deal.

We are consuming drinking water to cool industrial shite because it's cheaper than closed loop cooling, where little to no water is consumed.

If nothing else, it's fricking stupid.

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and recycle their water.

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you have some losses in the loop and have to replenish.

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we have no recent studies or estimates on what our state water budget is

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So why is the opposition pushing the narrative of "its going to drain our water supply" without them even knowing the extent of Louisiana's water scarcity threat? Because its a scare tactic that has absolutely worked on so many across political boundaries.

You would think if our water was semi-scarce, experts and studies would be done to confirm or deny it. But since their is lack of interest in doing so, I believe our water levels are fine.

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Microsoft is building the world's "first AI super factory" in Atlanta and it uses other liquids for cooling.

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Wouldn't this, at least potentially, create other environmental impacts?

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I mean, water wealthy Baton Rouge is facing the collapse of its aquifer because industry already pulls too much too fast, but sure, all made up by liberals

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So truth of one means the other is true?

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How real is a water scarcity threat, re: Building Data Centers?

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If they are a closed-loop system, there's no threat.

From the best information I can find, the Meta system in Richland Parish is going to be a "partial closed-loop", meaning it will recycle water multiple times. Even with that, they are going to draw 8.4 BILLION gallons per year. By comparison, Exxon uses ~18B-20B per year (combined ground water and river water, with most of it coming from the Mississippi, I believe, and most of that is treated then returned back to the river).

The Amazon centers around Shreveport will primarily use air cooling, with water use maxing at around 13% of the time (probably during the hottest parts of the year). No idea how many gallons that will be, but probably not nearly on the scale of the Meta center.

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They don't want to use the River water because it's added cost to refine

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There are no requirements for cooling water to be pure. There are no standards for cooling water.

I.e. you do not have to refine/treat river water to be cooling water.

All of the data systems will use closed loop water circulating systems to transport the heat from electronics to a device that discharges the heat to the atmosphere. It's the style of the device that is critical.


Device 1. Evaporative cooling tower, dribbles the hot circulating water down through contact surface packing designed to evaporate the water and pass it to the air as humidity. Low capital cost for installation is what project manager love. But it's a water hog, totally wasteful. Needs to be banned any where there is less than 40 inches of rain a year. Far more destructive than all of the CO2 global warming scams.

Device 2. Fin Fan heat exchangers. Use/waste no water. Works just like the radiator on your car. Hot circulating water passes through the inside of the tubing, heat is transferred through tubing fin to air passing over fins. Higher capital cost results from approach temperature differences possible and project managers hate higher capital. But device 2 wastes no water.


EDIT......By the way, these technology device approaches are 50 years old. Its all about the capital cost and project managers.

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You would think if our water was semi-scarce, experts and studies would be done to confirm or deny it.

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Well in last years legislative session with the reorg of DNR to DCE and the expansion of the charges of DOTD for inland water management that exact thing it put into motion and is gaining more and more steam.

I agree with you it is premature to say anything one way or another, but for either side. The closed loop cooling advances are great and will get us a lot farther down the road but coming from someone in the water management industry, we know startling little about how much we can use sustainably, where, when, etc.