The next when you flush your doings remember this is the type of water Google uses to flush the heat out of its huge computing center in Douglas County, Georgia.

In 2007 when it started operations at that center, they used the same water that’s pumped into the pipes of local homes. But at a point the Google realized that there is no need for the water used by its evaporative cooling system to be clean, learn more here. Result? Google informed that it’s now working with the Douglasville-Douglas County Water and Sewer Authority to cool the facility with 100 percent recycled water. “When the residents of the county take showers and flush their toilets, they’re helping to cool our data center” Joe Kava, the man who runs Google’s data center operations and construction team, tells Wired.

The main aim is not to save the money but reduce Google clean water usage footprint in that area, Google doesn’t want to contribute to the water shortage if it happens.

Google did something similar in Saint-Ghislain, Belgium, where it reused water from the industrial canal for “Free Cooling”

The Douglasville-Douglas County Water and Sewer Authority (WSA) operates a water treatment plant that, yes, seeps that sewer water from houses and returns it to Georgia’s Chattahoochee River.

But now WSA is diverting about 30% of that sewer water to a second treatment plant built and paid for Google. After it’s cleaned at this second facility the water is streamed to the company’s data center. The water is then used to run the data center’s evaporative cooling system. Click here for more information about data centers. Basically, Google pushes hot air from its servers into the much cooler water, and most of this water is then evaporated into the Georgia air as it cascades down large cooling towers. Any remaining water is moved into another treatment plant, where Google disinfects it, removes various minerals, and returns it to the Chattahoochee.

In Belgium, where the climate is much cooler, Google operates its data center without any cooling system at all and even on the southern coast of Finland, where it cools servers using water from the Baltic Sea.

Facebook and Microsoft use different technologies to chill their data center, at the same time, reduce the Global warming footprint.

What do you think about these Corporate Social Responsibilities?

via: Arstechnica

The DNetWorks Team

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