Hi there everyone,

Let me start this by saying that this is an honest question. I figure nobody would be better suited to answer my question than a group laser-focused on the negatives of the technology.

I see these types of memes a lot and see statistics of gallons consumed in a lot of articles I read. What I don’t understand though is where the water goes that it can’t be reclaimed or naturally return from a gas to a liquid.

As a kid(long ago), I was taught of the cycle of rain and the conversion between gases and liquid. It’s my understanding that when a liquid is used to cool something, it also follows the same conversion process as it cools.

Could someone explain to me what’s going on in this process where the 264 billion gallons of water used in the meme do not return to a liquid state?

I would appreciate any insight into the process that seems to defy this cycle that I am missing. Like I said prior, my knowledge of this process ended in middle school science class so I’m confident that I’m missing something.

Thanks for your time!

    • Kairos@lemmy.today
      2·
      4 days ago

      First sentence is true second isn’t. Most of the water consumption comes from electricity generation. It’s like 5% 95%.

      Also there’s no such thing as a truly closed system. But there are ones that use very little water to maintain pressure.

    • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
      1·
      4 days ago

      1. Most of the DC’s are using open-loop cooling, it’s far cheaper. If they’re using city water, they’re using aquifer supplies

      2. If one does use closed-loop cooling, they’re simply using power to pump the cooling. Guess what type of cooling power large plants require?

      Open loop using aquifer water, which is a miserable idea. Closed loop ends up using surface water by proxy or best case gas turbines which is straight up CO2.

      The best we could hope to do is put up huge solar arrays + battery, but they’ll never do that, the upfront cost would be enormous.

      It’s not like any of this is being designed to run responsibly. It’s all the least money they can spend for the max profit.