The United States houses many data centers, accounting for 70 billion kWh of electric energy or 2% of the country’s overall annual energy consumption. Tomorrow Water and its parent company, BKT Co. Ltd, has announced an initiative to develop co-located water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs) and data centers.
For saving energy in data centers
Tomorrow Water’s research finds that data centers can improve power and water use effectiveness when co-located with existing and planned WRRFs that have treatment capacities of over 10 million gallons per day. According to Tomorrow Water’s predictions, between 900 and 1,500 data centers could be built on these sites by just retrofitting primary clarifiers into space-saving compact advanced filtration systems, such as Tomorrow Water’s Proteus.
Tomorrow Water’s CEO, E.F. Kim, said,
“As our society moves toward digital transformation, data processing demand becomes crucial in all aspects, requiring more data centers near highly populated urban areas. These data centers will typically consume more fossil energy, aggravating the already worsening global warming situation. By having the data center in the WWRF, cooling will become easier, saving energy. Furthermore, BBF Proteus will divert more wastewater primary solids to biogas production, producing more renewable energy while reducing the aeration energy consumption in the wastewater secondary treatment step.”
With the “Co-Flow Initiative”, the company’s objective is to develop a data center on land previously occupied by conventional primary clarifiers that have been reclaimed by retrofitting the facility with BKT’s small-footprint BBF Proteus biofiltration technology. The energy and water savings created by BKT’s CO-FLOW Initiative will help address multiple crucial infrastructure needs at once while minimizing environmental impact and land use.
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