Hi there everyone,
Let me start this by saying that this is an honest question. I figure nobody would be better suited to answer my question than a group laser-focused on the negatives of the technology.
I see these types of memes a lot and see statistics of gallons consumed in a lot of articles I read. What I don’t understand though is where the water goes that it can’t be reclaimed or naturally return from a gas to a liquid.
As a kid(long ago), I was taught of the cycle of rain and the conversion between gases and liquid. It’s my understanding that when a liquid is used to cool something, it also follows the same conversion process as it cools.
Could someone explain to me what’s going on in this process where the 264 billion gallons of water used in the meme do not return to a liquid state?
I would appreciate any insight into the process that seems to defy this cycle that I am missing. Like I said prior, my knowledge of this process ended in middle school science class so I’m confident that I’m missing something.
Thanks for your time!


plus whatever anti-corosives and other [[accumulating] forever[?]] chemicals added that remain
I always assumed that distilled water (water turned to vapour, and re-condensed) is purified in the process.
That depends on how it’s recondensed. For distilled water you need a sterile collector.
The issue is that even when data centers don’t evaporate the water completely, their waste water has a much higher concentration of contaminants (because a bunch of the water evaporated out, concentrating everything that doesn’t evaporate). This makes it undrinkable.