Established desalination technologies could help data centers reduce their dependence on freshwater by treating salty or contaminated wastewater from the oil and energy industries for use in cooling systems, according to researchers at The University of Texas at Austin.
The team evaluated two desalination methods: reverse osmosis, which forces water through a semipermeable membrane to remove salt, and thermal treatment, which evaporates water and condenses the vapor. Although reverse osmosis is more energy-efficient, it struggles with the highly concentrated brines produced by oil fields.
Thermal treatment can handle saltier water but requires more energy and is prone to scale buildup. Notably, the researchers also found that even the most energy-intensive treatment method would account for only a small fraction of a data center’s total energy consumption.
Source: Texas University
Wastewater from some Texas oil fields could provide an abundant alternative to the freshwater consumed by large data centers. According to the researchers, using treated wastewater could ease demand on local freshwater supplies while keeping additional costs and energy consumption relatively low.
The team focused on the Permian Basin in West Texas, where oil and gas extraction generates vast quantities of polluted water. The team suggested that this water could be put to better use, rather than being disposed of elsewhere, which poses long-term risks.
“The Permian [Basin] puts out 1,200 Olympic-sized swimming pools per day, and right now this water is transported over long distances and injected underground. This is problematic in many ways including the risk of seismic activity,” Vaibhav Bahadur, a mechanical engineering professor at UT Austin, explained. “We’re also running out of space to bury that water, by as early as 2030. We need to find a way to use it, and cleaning it up for data centers is a great way to do that.”
The study, “System-scale design and analysis of desalination systems for meeting water needs of data centers,” appears in the journal Water Research.
