Microsoft has developed a way to prevent its AI model servers from using excessive amounts of water. The company introduced a new “zero evaporation” design for cooling data centers, which involves recycling water through a closed circuit.
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This system circulates water continuously through the servers and coolers in AI data centers, allowing heat to be efficiently dissipated. Currently, Microsoft and other companies use fresh water to cool their AI servers. However, this method consumes a large amount of water due to continuous server use and the evaporation of the water during the process.
According to a study mentioned by Thetechbasic, Microsoft alone uses up to 700,000 liters of water in its data centers in the United States to cool the servers that train GPT, the OpenAI model. The researchers found that if Microsoft had trained the AI in its Asian data centers, the water consumption would have tripled. Additionally, using ChatGPT consumes a significant amount of water, with each chat session (containing about 20 to 50 questions) using the equivalent of a 500 ml bottle of water.
Microsoft is focusing on minimizing water usage in its data centers to address these environmental concerns.
Microsoft’s solution could completely eliminate the excessive waste of fresh water used for cooling purposes. The company has stated that it has been working for some time to minimize water use, measuring this through Water Use Effectiveness (WUE), a metric that divides the total annual water consumption for cooling and humidification by the total energy consumption for IT equipment.
In its last fiscal year, Microsoft reported that its AI data centers had an average WUE of 0.30 L/kWh, showing a 39% improvement compared to 2021. However, with the rise of AI and the growing demand for servers to train and run these models, the company faces new challenges. Despite this, Microsoft believes that its new “zero evaporation” cooling system could reduce WUE to nearly zero in the data centers that use it.
The company, founded by Bill Gates, stated that its current data centers will continue to use a mix of air- and water-cooled systems. Starting in 2026, Microsoft plans to test the “zero water evaporation” system in its centers in Phoenix, Arizona, and Mt. Pleasant, Wisconsin, with the aim of making it the primary cooling method and implementing it across all its data centers by 2027.