With the rapid expansion of AI data centres, water pressure in cooling systems is receiving increased attention. TechCrunch reported that, while “the cooling of the data centre with urine” is only advertising headwinds, the reality behind it is that the water that is recycled from sewage treatment is used for cooling in the data centre.

Regenerative water is in the cooling system.

According to the industry interviewed, data centres do not directly use urine or untreated sewage to cool down because it contains salt, urea, bacteria and organic matter, which can easily cause equipment to be desolate, tasting and frequent cleaning.

A more feasible route now is to reuse waste water for industrial use after treatment of waste water in domestic sewage and drainage systems. The treatment usually passes through processes such as membrane bioreactors, reverse osmosis and UV to meet the standards available in cooling systems.

The engineering company CDM Smith, Greta Zornes, which is responsible for water reuse operations, states that the use of recycled water for industrial cooling has been going on for many years and that data centres are becoming one of the fastest growing scenarios for this demand.

AI expansion pushes up water demand

Reports indicate that increased use of renewable water in data centres can reduce crowding of local drinking water systems. However, the landing of the programme depends on the availability of adequate sewage treatment facilities in the vicinity and the availability of infrastructure to transport the treated water to the park.

If data centres are built in more remote areas, local sewage treatment plants are often insufficient to provide millions of gallons of water per day. This has left many projects still dependent on the supply of drinking water.

In the case of Lauden County, Virginia, United States of America, there are over 250 data centres and plans for further expansion. By 2025, local data centres use approximately 200 million gallons of renewable water per day, but this represents only 43 per cent of their daily water use. The remaining approximately 260 million gallons still come from the drinking water system.

  • It's about 200 million gallons a day.
  • About 43 per cent of total water use in data centres
  • The remaining approximately 57% are still dependent on drinking water

Infrastructure and policy remain bottlenecks

The report cites industry sources that the core issue of limiting the expansion of renewable water use is not technology per se, but the longer life cycle of treatment facilities, pipeline networks and associated investment construction.

According to Ecolab executive Michael Obradovitch, the AI industry itself may also be a contributor to such water infrastructure. Meta, for example, has committed to invest at least $270 million in sewage infrastructure projects around its data centre in order to enhance the availability of water for return.

Meanwhile, Bruno Pigott, a former US EPA water officer, is promoting a legislative proposal to provide a 30 per cent tax credit for projects to accelerate the expansion of regenerative water facilities.

It is argued that the warming of such discussions also reflects the growing public interest in the environmental burden of data centres. According to the latest Gallup survey, about 70 per cent of Americans oppose the construction of data centres in their own communities, and water, energy consumption and local resource occupation have become the focus of debate.