An imaginative new concept could mean data centres of the future are co-located with wastewater treatment works, especially in water scarce regions.

Data centres can be vast sites, housing huge quantities of digital information vital to the daily functions of governments, companies and individuals. They accounted for around 1% or 2% of global electricity demand in 2020 and they also use huge quantities of water, both for electricity generation and cooling the servers.

Meanwhile, wastewater treatment works produce an abundance of water and can generate plenty of energy too, from the breakdown of biological waste. However, all too often, these valuable resources are squandered by legacy processes that fail to capture and reuse them.

Bringing data centres and wastewater treatment plants together on one site makes sense and technology company Tomorrow Water is planning to collaborate with consultancy Arcadis to evaluate and develop Co-Flow, Tomorrow Water’s patented process for sustainable co-location.

Co-Flow integrates a wastewater treatment plant and a data centre on a single plot of land, linking the energy and fluid streams of both facilities to improve sustainability and cost efficiency. Many benefits come from intensifying the water and energy processes in this way, including reduced use of water from municipal supplies and lower energy costs.

The technology also enables data centres to be built above the existing treatment infrastructure, further reducing the footprint required for the new data centres. The treatment works can even be installed underground.

Once the initial evaluation is complete, Arcadis and Tomorrow Water will develop the first Co-Flow projects in the US and are already in discussions with several data centre operators, including electronics giant Samsung, which has 17 data facilities.

“Co-locating data centres and wastewater reclamation plants will help reduce wastewater discharges, offset potable water demand and offer triple bottomline benefits to the water-stressed regions,” said Ufuk Erdal, senior vice president and water reuse director at Arcadis.

Anthony Dusovic, chief operating officer of Tomorrow Water said, “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. Co-Flow’s impact potential is quite high and supports the industry’s need to make data centres more sustainable."

Co-Flow is being developed as part of the company’s Tomorrow Water Project, an initiative to co-locate and interconnect infrastructure elements such as wastewater treatment, renewable energy generation, and data centre capacity, capitalising on their complementary energy, heat, nutrient, and water inputs and outputs to make them more sustainable and affordable to the global population.