Using the Sea To Cool Your Data Center

1sockchuck writes "We haven't yet seen signs of the Google Navy of seagoing data centers that use the ocean for power and cooling. But data center developers are planning to use sea water air conditioning in a new project on the island nation of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. Cold water from deep-sea currents would be piped ashore to be used in a heat exchanger for the data center facility. A similar system has been used to replace the chillers at Cornell University, which draws cold water from Lake Cayuga. The Cornell system cost $50 million, but has slashed cooling-related energy usage by 86 percent."

Comments

interest prospect

[Icegryphon]

But what are maintenance costs and lifespan of such a piece of equipment,
I can't image Saltwater not eating the hell out of all the piping.

Re:interest prospect

[initdeep]

seawater is the lifeblood of every naval nuclear power plant, and as someone who was in the navy and in charge of the heat exchangers attached to a naval nuclear power plant, i can assure you it is a big deal and a LOT of time and maintenance is put into preventing corrosion and the associated leakage in piping that a heat exchanger utilizes.
In order to have efficient heat exchange between two moving fluids, you need a very thin wall and you need it to be clear of any and all corrosion. This means a lot of time and effort, not too mention chemicals are used.
For a mobile naval vessel, there is no other option, so the cost isn't an issue.

For a land based cooling system, it is an issue because there very well may be less expensive alternatives.

Not too mention the possible ramifications (good and bad) of discharging all of the heated water back into the marine ecology.

not a thermal insulator and heat tax

[goombah99]

Other than a set up for your gag, I don't see why you call paint a thermal insulator. It does not have to be so. many kinds of coating promote thermal coupling.

One thing that does bother me is dumping waste heat in someone elses backyard for free promotes the inefficient use of energy. that is, I can decrease my cooling costs by using more efficient but more expensive computers which incidentally produce less waste heat, or I could use less expensive inefficient computers and take advantage of public domain cooling, like cayuga lake.

Is Cornell paying a tax to use Cayuga lake as a heat dump? that would help internalize the economic externalities that drive them to consume more electricity because the cooling is free.

likewise for sea water cooling.

This might seem like worry much about a small thing: isn't the cooling resevoir comparatively infinite? the answer is surprising no, not only is it not infinite, it's never going to grow, and we have already saturated it in much or the US and Europe. For example the big limit on Nuclear power plant growth is now availability of cooling. SOme rivers in Tenesee are known to heat up to 80 degrees when the power plants operate a full power in summer.

thus this needs to be publicly regulated now.

Re:not a thermal insulator and heat tax

[afidel]

Not sure of the specifics of Cayuga lake but if it's anything like the Great Lakes then there is a large area of cold water that is basically devoid of life. One recent plant used the incoming city water supply which is drawn from a cold deep region as a thermal sink, since the water was just going to heat to ground temperature anyways the net effect was slightly lower heat load on the earth surrounding the cities water pipes. Of course the energy sink potential isn't infinite, but it's potentially very large and if it reduces the one side of the energy equation by ~80% then that's all the fewer resources we have to use up. Pardon me if you take offense but you sound a bit like the people in the Greenpeace movement who can't see the forest for the trees, we need to take advantage of things like freecooling and nuclear power so we can reduce the immediate resource usage that is occurring. If we find better ways to do things down the road that's great going for cleaner (not clean) options today is better than waiting decades for something perfect to come about if ever. We aren't going back to hunter gatherers so we need to do what we can we the technology we have to minimize our impact.