Reduce Cooling Water Use Immediately

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Oct 09, 2015, 05:02 ET

MENLO PARK, Calif., Oct. 9, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Boardrooms are full of discussions around corporate responsibility and sustainability. The news is filled with more communities suffering drought conditions and energy usage spikes. There is no time to waste in addressing these issues which are critical to our communities.

Technology is able today to reduce the amount of water used by most data centers (who use evaporative cooling) by 10%–50% or more. Ex.:

Water	Common	Optimized	Savings
Average Tns Evaporative Cooling on line	1,000	1,000
Average Evaporation / Yr in Gallons	13,140,000	13,140,000
Cycles	4	8	Gallons	%
Bleed in Gallons / Year	4,380,000	1,877,143	2,502,857	57%
Total Water Needed in Gallons / Year	17,520,000	15,017,143	2,502,857	14%
Energy			KwHr	%
KwHr Used to treat and deliver raw water	28,242	24,208	4,035	14%
KeHr used to pump and treat waste water	8,370	3,587	4,783	57%
Round Trip	36,612	27,795	8,818	24%
Carbon			Lbs	%
	18,414	7,892	10,522	57%
	63,878	54,753	9,125	14%
Round Trip	82,291	62,644	19,647	24%

The reason maximally efficient operation is not the norm is not the cost of the solution; it is tradition, lack of incentives and disincentive.

Tradition: Water and wastewater costs have been a small part of the total cost of ownership of a data center, therefore tradition dictates a low priority to conserve water and minimize wastewater.

Lack of incentives: ROI rules the roost. In locations where incentives provided by water agencies are not available, marginal projects are not considered until the issue becomes one of compliance. Incentives are needed in some cases to tip the scale.

Disincentives: Water treatment suppliers sell chemicals that are directly tied to the amount of water used. When water usage decreases due to efficiency gains, less chemistry is used and a direct hit to the water treatment supplier's bottom line results.

Today we have the ability to instantly and continually monitor and address an unlimited number of things including the following that just happen to impact water efficiency:

The water chemistry in the cooling tower
The amount and cost of the water and chemical used
How the cooling tower is operating vs. design and current atmospheric condition.
How weather is impacting the need for and quantity of evaporative cooling on line.
The full process capability and analytics needed to optimize water and energy consumption.

The questions we need to ask regarding all of the above are:

Is it optimal?
If not why not and what is the fix?
When can we deploy resources to remedy the suboptimal condition?

In 800 data centers in CA the savings potential is staggering:

Data Center	800
Current Water / Day / Data Center	360,000
The Industry
Current Water / Day	288,000,000
Current Water / Yr	105,120,000,000
Annual Savings the Industry Can Deliver
Available Savings - Gallons	14,716,800,000
Available savings- KwHr /Yr	51,847,286
Available Savings - Carbon Tns /Yr	57,763