Novel ‘Co-Flow’ data centre cooling concept gets a boost

California water treatment supplier Tomorrow Water’s ‘Co-Flow’ gets a development boost with a partnership with Samsung.

The Co-Flow concept involves integrating a data centre with a wastewater treatment facility on a single plot of land and linking the energy and fluid streams of the two facilities to improve their sustainability and economics.

Cooling is a potential major energy requirement for data centres, with one popular option being their location in colder climate countries such as Iceland and the Nordics. Tomorrow Water’s Co-Flow utilises cooling water from the wastewater treatment facility, with the heated water that emerges then returned to the facility to complete the cycle.

The concept further envisions the data centre being built on top of the wastewater treatment facility to optimise the spatial use and overcome the limits on land availability for data centres.

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In January Tomorrow Water entered a partnership with the design and consultancy organisation Arcadis on the evaluation and development of Co-Flow facilities in the US.

In the latest agreement Tomorrow Water and its parent company Korean headquartered BKT have entered a partnership in that country with Samsung as well as Dohwa Engineering and BNZ Partners for the development of Co-Flow solutions.

“Reimagining efficiency models for vital infrastructure such as data centres and wastewater treatment plants is just one way we will contribute to safeguarding the environment for future generations,” Tomorrow Water COO Anthony Dusovic said at the time of the Arcadis agreement.

“Co-Flow’s impact potential is quite high and supports the industry’s need to make data centres more sustainable.”

Samsung with some 17 data centres is a major owner/operator of such facilities.

Co-Flow was developed as part of the company’s broader ‘Tomorrow Water Project’ to co-locate and interconnect infrastructure elements such as wastewater treatment, biogas renewable energy generation and data centre capacity, capitalising on their complementary energy, heat, nutrient and water inputs and outputs.