UT Austin researchers weigh desalination for data center cooling

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin evaluated two desalination routes for turning oilfield wastewater into cooling water for data centers. Their study, published in Water Research, compares reverse osmosis with thermal treatment.

Reverse osmosis pushes water through a semipermeable membrane and uses less energy, but the team found it handles the concentrated brines from oil fields poorly. Thermal treatment, which evaporates and condenses the water, tolerates saltier streams yet demands more energy and tends to accumulate scale. The researchers also report that even the most energy-hungry option would take only a small share of a data center's overall power use.

The work centers on the Permian Basin in West Texas, where extraction produces large volumes of polluted water. Vaibhav Bahadur, a mechanical engineering professor at UT Austin, said that water is now hauled long distances and injected underground, a practice he linked to seismic risk and limited disposal space.

For a plant weighing on-site water reuse, the finding suggests treatment energy may not be the deciding cost. The paper does not establish performance at a specific facility.