The 22nd of March is World Water Day, which is very topical for data centers.
With the rise of AI, there has understandably been a lot of concern with the subsequent increase in water consumption; as workloads intensify, IT hardware in data centers generate significant heat. In order to maintain optimal performance and reliability, data centers require advanced cooling management systems. A data center’s cooling infrastructure traditionally accounts for 30-50% of their total energy consumption, but with the rise of AI, this will only increase.
Water, or liquid cooling, is the most efficient method of data center cooling for high-density loads. This is because liquid has a higher density than alternate mediums, like air. As such, the liquid cooling market is rapidly growing, with estimates that its value will reach over $48 billion by 2034.
The conservation of water should be and is often a design consideration when it comes to creating liquid-cooling solutions. Direct-to-chip liquid cooling utilises a closed-loop system on the technical cooling system, so that the same liquid can be cooled, heated and re-used.
The question of efficient use of resources, in particular the use of process water in cooling, comes on the external heat rejection side. A purely air-cooled solution would have to use significantly more energy to reject the heat, meaning that you’re reducing water consumption at the data center but are consuming a lot more electrical energy.
What’s more, it’s important to understand that by reducing the water consumption at the data center, the water consumption is merely redirected back to the source at the power generation process; in 2017, a study by the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory showed that the average water-consumption for electricity in the United States is 0.576 gallons/kWh.
Using water for data center cooling reduces the water consumption associated with generating power. To compare, cooling 1kWh of energy with an Excool Zero unit requires 0.253 US Gal on a peak design day in Virginia, less than half the water required to generate that energy at the power station.
Achieving and maintaining the correct balance between energy consumption and water usage at a data center is crucial to operating sustainability. A cooling solution that offers the flexibility to adjust the balance and future-proof the project will be key to delivering the planned results.
There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ method when it comes to data center cooling, but with the emergence of new technologies, we are no longer confined by ‘water vs no water’ and a flexible middle ground can be achieved.
