So no more peeing in the shower in Douglas County then, huh?
Google cools data center with bathtubs, dishwashers
Google has partnered with a local water-treatment utility to cool a massive data center using greywater – that's water recycled from residential bathtubs, showers, washing machines, and the like. The data center in question is located in Douglas County, Georgia – that's the Georgia of Sherman's March to the Sea, not the …
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Tuesday 20th March 2012 22:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: How are they getting a separate stream?
That's what I thought, Grey water in this case refers to partially treated recycled water, so if it includes residential then it's a mix of sewage and everything else or it could be non-residential (rainwater runoff etc.but I don't know it that's kept separate either) that's then been mostly treated/purified but not to the standard of drinking water.
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Tuesday 20th March 2012 23:08 GMT Orv
Re: How are they getting a separate stream?
Stormwater runoff is kept separate in newer systems, but is combined in some older ones. (The reason it's kept separate now is the sudden influx of water during a heavy storm can exceed the plant capacity and cause a sewage overflow, which is generally frowned on these days.)
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Wednesday 21st March 2012 09:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: How are they getting a separate stream?
If its like a domestic septic tank, it goes into a settling tank, solids sink and the top layers are fairly clean. In fact clean enough to enter a soak away which seeps away into the landscape.
I presume its a similar thing for main infrastructure, with some added steps to cater for all the chemicals and weird stuff people put down their toilets
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Friday 30th March 2012 17:48 GMT Michael Wojcik
Re: grey water for flushing toilets
When I was in Japan in the mid-'90s, I used toilets that had tank lids that had sink basins molded into them. The fill line for the toilet ran up to a faucet head above the tank lid; fill water ran out of the faucet into the basin in the tank lid, then into the tank. So you flushed the toilet and washed your hands right there using the fill stream, and that greywater filled the tank.
There was a soap dish molded into the tank lid too, of course. If you wanted to wash with hot water, you'd have to use the sink; but IME even getting some people to wash with cold water is a win.
These days, it's become fairly popular in "green building" circles in the US to talk about separate grey- and blackwater DWV systems in new houses, and make the grey available at outside taps for things like watering the lawn and washing the car. How often these systems are actually implemented I don't know.
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Wednesday 21st March 2012 14:10 GMT JLH
Re: True believers
Yes - but the discharge is HOTTER
If you took an intake from downstream of your outtake you would end up heating the same water again and again. There has to be a temperature difference between the hot water which comes from your server room pipe loops and the water which you are using for cooling - too close a difference and you aren't able to transfer much heat into the cooling water. Identical temperatures of course and you can't transfer any.
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Wednesday 21st March 2012 11:15 GMT deadlockvictim
Effluent temperature
Am I right in thinking that the effluent water coming out of Google's plants will be considerably warmer than what went in beforehand?
If this is the case, would any of the ecologists out there explain to me what the environmental impact will be on heating up the Hooch [1]?
[1] A great nickname for a river. It sounds like slang for alcohol.
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Wednesday 21st March 2012 13:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
Looks like marketing BS
As above noted, black/greywater goes in the same line in practically all cities. After it it is cleaned in a water treatment facility. In Finland we call it technical water. I.e. that is water that is clean enough to be discharged to nature. Which is then discharged to the natural water system (river/lake/sea) in a location that has high enough current to dilute the technical water to the water system.
From the diagram attached to this article you would expect, that 70% of grey water is going straight to river and only 30% goes trough Google facilities and are treated properly before dispatched to the nature. Happy swimming, if that is true. In Finland that would be illegal arrangement. Especially to a river system.
NOTE: This technical water is still not safe enough to be drink; refer to Water crisis in City of Nokia (8k of 30k inhabitants got sick 2007 due illegal piping and other malpractices in a water treatment facility). That's why it is important that it is not discharged to a still water.