Technologies like artificial intelligence and cloud computing help innovate solutions to scientific, business, and economic problems around the world. But their use creates challenging problems of their own. A Spider undergrad is working to spotlight how resource-hungry computer facilities require an outsized amount of a limited natural resource, and ideally, help reduce their impact.

Junior Wenyi Liu's research focuses on the water needed to cool computers at large data centers and how they can become more efficient and sustainable. Servers in data centers generate lots of heat, and water is used in cooling systems for the computers and to generate electricity.

"Water is increasingly scarce in the world," Liu said, "Demand will continue to outstrip supply. It's important and urgent to decrease water usage in data centers."

According to the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, Virginia is home to almost 150 hyperscale data centers and it the largest such market in the world. Hyperscale data centers include at least 5,000 servers and can require millions of square feet in space to operate.

Tech companies are in the process of expanding these data centers, Liu said, and often prioritize construction costs over long-term sustainability. His research, which he plans to publish online, will include recommendations for developing economically efficient and sustainable practices at large data centers.

In his research, Liu is working with a database of more than 2,000 hyperscale computer facilities. He's able to calculate the water consumption of data centers based on how efficiently they use power to run their computer servers and related equipment. The more efficiently the facility uses power, the less water is wasted. For instance, he's researching data centers in Nevada, which leverage solar power to reduce power consumption.

Switching to recycled water or seawater for cooling equipment can also lead to more efficient data centers, he said. And some companies are working on creative ways to use less freshwater, which means less of a drain on local resources. 

"Recently, Microsoft built an undersea data center that used seawater to cool its system," Liu said. "West Virginia built a data center in an abandoned coal mine and used recycled water. We're researching using water in these ways to promote such methods and broaden perspectives."

In China, where Liu is from, the offshore Hainan Undersea Data Center is being built 115 feet beneath the sea. The center is the size of 15 football fields.

Liu said there are some problems to consider, such as the startup costs and maintenance accessibility, and the need to evaluate the impact on the local ecosystem.

"I think this program can be a prototype for data centers in China and the world to show the possibility of using more eco-friendly ways to deal with our data booming," Liu said.