Data centre cooled using river water

USA: A 7MW data centre constructed on a barge is being cooled using water from the San Joaquin River on which it stands at Port of Stockton, California.  

The 10,000ft² (930m²) Nautilus’ Stockton data centre claims a zero-impact cooling system with high energy efficiency, no water consumption, no refrigerants, no water treatment chemicals, no wastewater, and no harm to wildlife.

Specifically, the Nautilus Stockton data centre is a high-density data centre with a cooling system that cuts net power consumption by 30%. It supports 7MW of critical IT load in four vaults. 

The centre uses Nautilus TRUE (Total Resource Usage Effectiveness) closed water-loop technology using the cold river water to keep racks cool. The system uses no mechanical refrigeration and operates under vacuum, meaning there is no threat of leaks.

Cool water from the bay is filtered to remove contaminants, prior to reaching the heat exchanger. A fresh water cooling loop on the other side of the heat exchanger feeds the cool water to the rear-door systems on the racks.

The IT equipment is housed inside modular data halls on the deck, with servers in racks with rear-door cooling units. Each data hall has four parallel 675kW leak proof cooling distribution units configured in a “4 to make 3” configuration, each fed by redundant open-loop systems.

All the mechanical and electrical equipment is located below deck in the hold.

“The rapidly growing data centre sector is just as rapidly on the way to becoming utterly unsustainable,” commented Nautilus CEO James Connaughton. “Nautilus can reverse that. Our goal is to transform the data centre sector into one that is higher performing, dramatically more sustainable, and more rapidly and equitably able to serve communities, government, and businesses globally. We want to make this technology as widely available as possible to help close the digital divide and enhance the lives of people around the world.”