Slashdot Mirror
Town Expands To Boost Cooling For NSA Data Center
1sockchuck writes "A substantial water supply is critical for most large data centers. A case in point: Officials in Bluffdale, Utah have agreed to annex land housing a new $1.2 billion data center for the National Security Agency. The move makes the NSA a higher priority customer for Bluffdale's water utility, which prevents its water supply from a potential cutoff in the event of a water shortage — which would be a problem, since water will be used extensively in the data center's cooling system. Many large data centers have been working to reduce their water use to make them more sustainable and reliable."
Is it unusable for people after it's been through a datacenter? Why does using it to transfer heat around reduce its utility for drinking?
Depends what part of the cooling loop it ends up being used in. Because you really don't want things like galvanic corrosion or organic goo damaging your cooling system, cooling water that spends an extended period of time in the cooling loop is likely to be pretty nasty. Additives, biocides, dissolved metals, etc. Tasty.
Water that just flows past a heat exchanger into which the main cooling loop dumps its heat is probably just fine. Water used for evaporative cooling should end up being nice and distilled(assuming that there isn't too much unpleasantness in the local air); but the percentage you can re-capture in Utah's climate may or may not be all that exciting...
One does wonder why the NSA chose that particular climate to build a big, water-hungry datacenter...(and what inducements the town leadership accepted for the... good fortune... of having its water allocated to the NSA first and its citizens second.)
Is Lake Superior in your congressional district? No? Then STFU.
I read the internet for the articles.
Why do you have lawns then?
Having lawns in places that would need a lawn to be watered is a braindead idea.
Why would you locate something that demands cooling resources in the MIDDLE OF A DESERT?
Because an influential Senator wants the facility there, perhaps?
I live in Utah. Our small front yard is a combination of wood-chips and plants that do not require water. Our larger back yard has grass, which requires watering during the hottest months. Foregoing grass sounds like a good idea until you realize that a patch of blazing hot, dusty, arid desert interspersed with stunted oak-brush, clumpy dry grasses and cacti is useless for most typical back yard activities.
So don't live in the desert, you say? You might be on to something there.
Closed with respect to the water, not the energy.
Automobile cooling system work just fine and don't consume fluid when operating properly. An open-loop system (where you lose the coolant) is cheaper and easier to build, but closed-loop systems work perfectly well.