[TriLUG] A rare look inside a Google Datacenter

[Aaron Joyner]

Joe actually talks about that in the video.  The Hamina DC mixes a
large volume of cold sea water with the heated sea water in a
tempering building, before releasing it back into the sea, to avoid
exactly the environmental concern you mention.

Hamina is a pretty special place though, you can't do direct transfer
just anywhere.  In order for it to be practical to release heat into a
body of water, you have to have sufficient volume and flow to be able
to absorb the heat, which takes a surprisingly large volume of water.
I always thought it would make a lot of sense to do direct heat
transfer into the Columbia River in The Dalles, OR.  It's just feet
away from the datacenter, and seems like a lot of water rushing by...
but it wouldn't be acceptable to do it there largely because the
smaller volume and flow of water overall, the lower initial
temperature of the water, and the particularly sensitive environmental
concerns of that freshwater source.  The Columbia River is big... but
it's got nothing on the Gulf of Finland.  :)

Aaron S. Joyner


On Oct 17, 2012 8:47 PM, "Jeremy Portzer" <jeremyp at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/18/2012 2:49 AM, matt at noway2.thruhere.net wrote:
>>
>> Quite interesting.  I wonder how do they keep the exchangers from fowling
>> up when they run sea water through them.  It would be impossible to
>> chemically treat the sea water.  Sea water would have less of a problem
>> with bacteria, but I think that the saline would plug up the P&F's pretty
>> quick.
>
>
> It requires specific materials and technology, but cooling via seawater is not a new problem.  Marine engines from your 1-hp putt-putt outboard right up to the biggest container ship use seawater cooling systems, and the technology for protecting against the salt and other contaminants is pretty mature.  I don't see why you couldn't use standard marine engineering techniques for a stationary seawater cooling plant.
>
> The more interesting discussion is the situation around the outlet where the warm water is returned - this could be considered an unacceptable environmental impact in some areas depending on the details.  I would guess that could be mitigated by lots of outlet pipes spreading the warm water over a larger area?
>
> Cheers,
> Jeremy
> --
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