Water is an amazing substance. The human body is made up of more than 50% water. Approximately 70% of the earth’s surface is covered by water. We drink it, bathe in it, cook with it, clean with it. It is also used to cool data centres, which is an increasing draw on what is a scarce resource in many parts of the world.

The boom in artificial intelligence (AI) has been fuelling the construction of new data centres worldwide. This is driven by the massive computing workloads required to train and run generative AI models. AI data centres are specialised facilities with the infrastructure needed to support the increased computational demands.

A recent UN report warned that water used by AI data centres is expected to equal the everyday water needs of 1.3 billion people by 2030. Currently, air conditioning systems carry cool air to the server rooms housing the electronic equipment. Water is then used to carry away waste heat from the air to the environment.

But are there other potential ways to cool these facilities, ways that may not consume as much water?

For engineering purposes, water has extraordinary thermal properties. It has a very high specific heat capacity (the energy required to raise its temperature). It also has an exceptionally high latent heat of evaporation (the energy required to turn liquid water into water vapour).

Latent heat is what cools you when sweat evaporates from your skin, an astonishingly........

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