They have to be cooling/chilling the water first before they use it to cool the computers.
Circulate it out, take most of the heat out with big radiators and fans, re-chill the cooled water, pump it back in to cool the computers, closed loop system, basically no water loss.
Can't believe they're just flushing that water down the drain, don't make too much sense, all it did was get warm.
The company I worked for, 25 years ago started using a closed loop system to cool our mobile mainframes, but we used antifreeze and a chiller unit, more efficient than using water.
Seems like a closed loop system would have been, the byproduct of heated water used , harvested to produce electricity to augment or provide total needs of the equipment or at least the facility. Can goobermint architects , planners be so stupid or is water used just dumped back into the reservoir or underground aquifers .....?
If it’s just in the community loop and rotational use with zero loss due cooling only ......then not a real issue is it ?
Just questions, my opinion only....stay safe !
No, it is not inefficient. And no, they almost certainly aren’t just “flushing the water down the drain” as you suggest.
Evaporating water to cool the water left behind is a key part of most large commercial/institutional HVAC systems. That’s why there are cooling towers on top of / next to said structures.
Evaporating water to provide condenser cooling is wildly more thermodynamically efficient than cooling a fluid with air across a heat exchanger, as you suggest. Sometimes there are reasons to do it, but it is certainly not preferred for a large system like this.
At the water consumption rate they quoted, the system should be using a cooling tower for indirect cooling of the computers. Also, air cooling would not be an efficient choice as you need a greater than 50 deg F approach temperature.
If I were designing a system for this, I would use cooling tower water to heat exchange against a mechanical chiller with the chiller having a closed loop running to the electronic equipment.