Comment on What's the deal with AI datacenters using water for cooling?

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mushroommunk@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

It’s definitely not able to run a turbine as is but either way it doesn’t really solve the problem. My understanding is steam turbines don’t actually condense or cool the water all that much. You still have hot water, maybe not fully boiling but still hot enough you’ll have a not insignificant amount of evaporation and environmental damage if you just dump it. There’s condensing and non condensing designs but the condensing design requires massive cooking towers and more water draw from a heat exchanger.

I’m not a systems engineer so calculating potential cost savings of adding the remaining heat to capture power vs just letting it evaporate vs using a closed loop system is outside my wheelhouse.

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