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John O | October 2016

Data Centers seek cooling options to reduce water footprint


a study by the center for environmental policy at imperial college in london that was published on mdpi.com last year made waves by estimating that for every gigabyte of data consumed by smartphone users, 200 liters of water is involved.

 

data_centers_600

(wikimedia commons)

 

with european smartphone users going through 1.9gb each month and american users going through 3.78, then there are serious concerns about the water consumption required by data centers across the globe or in the production of electricity to power all of the computers processing users requests for the latest app, game, or video.

 

the researchers have noted that the figure is an estimate, according to a bbc story, but the point is that smartphones are leaving a substantial water footprint. demand for data is not going anywhere, in fact it is increasing by a significant amount every year. so, companies are exploring new ways to manage the cooling needs of data centers.

 

the abstract from the imperial college study reads:

 

“the internet and associated information and communications technologies (ict) are diffusing at an astounding pace. as data centers (dcs) proliferate to accommodate this rising demand, their environmental impacts grow too. while the energy efficiency of dcs has been researched extensively, their water footprint (wf) has so far received little to no attention.

 

“this article conducts a preliminary wf accounting for cooling and energy consumption in dcs. the wf of dcs is estimated to be between 1047 and 151,061 m3/tj. outbound dc data traffic generates a wf of 1–205 liters per gigabyte (roughly equal to the wf of 1 kg of tomatoes at the higher end). it is found that, typically, energy consumption constitutes by far the greatest share of dc wf, but the level of uncertainty associated with the wf of different energy sources used by dcs makes a comprehensive assessment of dcs’ water use efficiency very challenging.

 

“much better understanding of dc wf is urgently needed if a meaningful evaluation of this rapidly spreading service technology is to be gleaned and response measures are to be put into effect.”

 

find the full report at http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/7/8/11260.

 

green data centers utilize renewable power such as solar and wind or are being located in environments that make cooling easier, such as microsoft’s test of an underwater data center and facebook’s lulea data center near the arctic circle in sweden. check out lulea’s facebook page for more information, https://www.facebook.com/luleadatacenter.

 

apple, google, green mountain, and amazon web services have all moved towards green data centers, making a commitment to find new means for reducing their water footprint.

 

learn more about this at http://www.bbc.com/news/business-37471911

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