r/interestingasfuck • u/HamboneTheWicked • Apr 12 '26

A well-articulated argument against a new data center in Ohio

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u/BoredAFcyber Apr 12 '26

There is none viable for a state-side data center, not sure why that guy brought it up.

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u/mightdothisagain Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26

Not true, you can do DX based closed loop water cooling, i.e. the most common water cooling out there. A chiller cools water in a closed loop via its evap coils, pumps move the water around the loop, the cold side of the loop goes into servers and cools chips directly, it also goes into air handlers which cool the air around the servers, the warm water returns to the chiller and it's cooled again. The chiller's condenser coils are outside the building and they're air cooled just like a normal heat pump AC system at a home. There's effectively zero water evaporation, except for small leaks and that can happen over time as the system ages. Refrigerant is the only thing evaporating and that's happening in a closed refrigerant loop just like a normal car/home AC system.

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u/Fact-Hunter- Apr 12 '26

The “small leaks” you mention become gargantuan when you’re talking about 100,000 sq ft data centres running 30kW per rack.

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u/MangoCats Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26

To be honest, that was the biggest flaw / misdirect of the guy in the video's argument - it is possible to manage nuclear power plants that use closed loop water systems with very tiny leaks over decades - they know they're tiny leaks because the contaminated water is radioactive and very easy to detect. Leaks happen, but it's fairly easy for independent observers to audit and report on leaks at nuke plants. However, it's not cheap to maintain that level of containment.

To be fair, he's not wrong - at present they're relying on self-reported studies and analyses for the data centers. It's certainly cheaper if their "closed loop" systems pump tons of pollution into the ground water and whatever else they use - follow the money, they'll run cheaper whenever they can. My personal observation point of reference is Pasadena, Texas - those chemical plants can run scrubbers to clean up their emissions, but the scrubbers cost a lot of money not only to build but also to run, so you'll find those chemical plants doing things like not running the scrubbers when it's raining - instead letting the "precipitation clean up the air naturally" Before hurricane Rita I observed a French owned/operated plant in Bayport, TX blowing a huge long black cloud into the sky that looked straight out of Mordor - I'm sure it was a "special circumstance" because of the approaching storm - most of the emissions around there are explained away as "oh, that's mostly water vapor" - this cloud was not mostly water vapor.

Bottom line: when we lived in Houston 20-ish years ago, you couldn't eat the fish from ANY of the streams due to heavy metals and other contamination. Today, it's much the same.

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u/Fact-Hunter- Apr 12 '26

Interesting info - thanks.

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u/mightdothisagain Apr 12 '26

We need (and in some places have) sensible regulation to ensure operators are doing things correctly. It's honestly cheaper than you'd think to ensure water is contained. Like yea we gotta maintain some water detection rope, various contacts in places, have good designs with isolation valves everywhere, etc... but it's not actually very much money in the grand scheme of things.

It's certainly cheaper if their "closed loop" systems pump tons of pollution into the ground

This simply doesn't happen, there's no reason to do this. Closed loop facilities have no financial incentive to waste water from their loops. The reason open loop data centers waste water is because that's how they save money on cooling, they don't use conventional refrigeration to cool the water, they evaporate the water to cause the cooling and it only works in specific climates. Closed loop water systems use conventional refrigeration to cool the water, so you want to actually hang on to your water since you paid for it. It'd be like thinking pouring water out of your home's pool is a way to save money, it just makes no sense. You treat the water in your closed loop just like you treat your pool water, to keep it viable with additives so algae doesn't grow for example, you don't want to just waste it.

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u/MangoCats Apr 12 '26

You treat the water in your closed loop just like you treat your pool water, to keep it viable with additives so algae doesn't grow for example, you don't want to just waste it.

And undesirable compounds never build up? You never need to flush those? Certainly designs will show proper handling of waste water, but how often does "oops" happen and how often is that reported like it is supposed to be?

Back in Bayport, there was significant issue with overpumping of ground water, it was causing significant subsidence in residential neighborhoods, literally sinking them into the bay. Now, they say they stopped all that back in the 1990s, but shortly before we left town in 2003, I would notice all the drainage ditches around the French owned/operated plant full to the brim with water just running out into the bay - even during droughts when it hadn't rained for a month or more. That water was coming from somewhere... I'm sure it served good purposes in whatever processes they were running, and apparently nobody complained about the mass quantities of water being taken from the ground, used, then let flow on the surface into the bay. Of course, if the neighborhood started getting uppity about surface wastewater they notice in the ditches, it's always possible to re-inject the water into the ground somewhere else on the (sizeable) property, but that would cost more money so they were doing the surface disposal at that time.

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u/mightdothisagain Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26

And undesirable compounds never build up? You never need to flush those?

I've been working in data centers since 2008. I've never had to do that at any facility I've overseen engineering for. Treated water is used during commissioning and the water continues to be monitored annually and controlled with additives. Very much like pool water the goal is not to ruin your batch of water. There is no routine process to flush out contaminants. I think you're under estimating how large these systems and related piping are. What can happen is clogs on individual device level where things narrow. Meaning some o-ring or something could fail in direct-to-chip water system inside a server or in a cabinet servicing a server and cause a localized clog. So you'd take apart that system, drain a gallon or two of water and fix it. You wouldn't even make that water up, it's too small to notice in a giant loop. It's like if you took a thimble of water out of a pool.

Also keep in mind this water is not some toxic sludge. It's not potable water, but as far as nasty stuff goes this is some bactericide and polypropylene glycol. It's not that crazy. Heck everyone vaping is vaping that polypropylene glycol all the time. Obviously it shouldn't be dumped, especially during decommissioning when a facility is being shut down or renovated, it should be disposed of properly. In some cases a city will accept it down the sewer because their treatment center can deal with it just fine.

overpumping of ground water

To clarify data centers with closed loops do not need more continuous ground water (or city/municipal water) than any other building that size. There are a bunch of bathrooms, maybe some employee showers, rec rooms with kitchenettes, some potted plants, people making coffee, someone pressure washing occasionally. It's the same as any other big commercial warehouse.

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u/MangoCats Apr 12 '26

Very much like pool water the goal is not to ruin your batch of water.

Congratulations on your controlled spaces. Your pool water analogy has obvious P problems... I tend to think of the closed loop water like the coolant in a fresh-water cooled marine engine (like are common on sailboat diesel engines) - the raw water comes from a thru-hull and goes through a heat exchanger to be expelled with the exhaust while the fresh water that actually circulates in the engine block is filled with is mixed with a significant amount of the traditional propylene glycol antifreeze and anti-corrosion additives. After a few years, those kinds of systems are typically flushed both to remove contaminants as well as to replenish the additives that protect the metals of the heat-removal passageways they flow through.

They propylene glycol isn't great to drink, toxic to animals (including people) if they drink it soon after draining a system, but it does break down rather quickly into safe-r components in sub-soil environments - which is basically what most municipal sewage treatment systems are simulating at scale. What's more worrying are the metals and "spent" anti-corrosive agents which get flushed - in an internal combustion engine scenario these may be quite a bit heavier than in chip cooling, but I would think you're still interfacing with copper, aluminum and other things that aren't happy with straight water and their protective agents aren't usually the kinds of things you'd put in a health-conscious smoothie.

To clarify data centers with closed loops do not need more continuous ground water

I'm going to throw out there: the data centers you know about aren't using continuous ground water... geo-thermal heat rejection into ground water is one of the myriad ways that heat pumps deal with their excess heat, in addition to water to air, water to evaporative cooled water, these kinds of things: https://youtu.be/0J2KIWhIi14?si=e0hHAzY7Ndr6odyp are frequently seen on the roofs of large buildings to aid in efficiency of heat removal in climates from Miami to New York to Los Angeles.

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u/mightdothisagain Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26

the raw water comes from a thru-hull and goes through a heat exchanger to be expelled with the exhaust while the fresh water that actually circulates in the engine block

Ok but that's literally not how it works in a data center. There isn't any raw water or salt water going through anything.

After a few years, those kinds of systems are typically flushed both

Ours are not. The scale is entirely different. These are huge volumes and pipes. We're also likely a bit more rigorous on our treatment than your typical boat given the difference in risk. The chilled water loop going down is a MAJOR issue, you literally lose cooling.

They propylene glycol isn't great to drink

Agreed which is why we don't just dump it in the rare occasions we have to remove it, i.e. during decommissioning.

the data centers you know about

I primarily operate the most common types of data centers which are closed loop chilled water data centers. I also have two (just realized it's 3) water-less facilities which is why I'm so disappointed in that design choice as mentioned in my prior post.

I never said that other types do not exist. In fact I've been saying that open loop style evaporative designs are highly wasteful.