On Tuesday, Tomorrow Water, the California sustainable water technology firm that is wholly owned by Korean wastewater infrastructure company BKT Co. Ltd, said it is pursuing patent protection of a concept to build data centers at water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs). The concept is part of Tomorrow Water’s strategy to synergistically cut the energy costs and environmental impacts of wastewater treatment and electricity-intensive data centers by colocating them on reclaimed space previously occupied by the primary clarifiers used to hold municipal wastewater.
According to BKT, which along with its 143 global registered patents developed the “BBF/Proteus biofiltration” technology that exchanges and reuses wastewater and heat between WRRF and on-site data centers (an approach it pioneered in Seoul, South Korea), the concept is particularly well suited for the U.S., home to the world’s largest number of data centers.
These facilities, which (they note) have become de facto utilities due to the economic imperative of technology, use 70 billion kWh of electric energy, or roughly 2 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption. Per BKT’s data, the amount of heat generated from keeping servers running is so great that cooling systems account for 30-50 percent of data center operating costs.
BKT explains the concept as follows: as data centers undergo air-cooling, hot air is diverted into the WRRF’s bio-treatment and/or sludge drying systems. Cold water treated by the WRRF is used to cool the air that feeds the data center. After the same water is warmed through the data center’s heat exchange, it is fed back into the WRRF, where it warms the biological reactors.
BKT and Tomorrow Water first demonstrated proof of concept at the Jungnang Water Reclamation Center in South Korea three years ago, cutting its energy resource footprint in half after the refurbishment.
Land prices
Besides the energy consumption argument, real estate scarcity is another industry constraint that Tomorrow Water and BKT aims to address. Demand for data centers is greatest in major metropolitan areas, where available land is limited or otherwise lacking in necessary infrastructure. The firm notes that land prices in Loudon County, in the greater Washington D.C. area, home to data centers for Google, Microsoft, Amazon and others, have more than doubled in recent years.
Advanced WRRFs–specifically, BKT notes, using its bio-filtration technology–occupy 60-70 percent less square footage than a primary water clarifier of the same throughput.
“The concept of building a WRRF alongside a data center is expected to be a particularly attractive alternative for large cities in the United States that are experiencing budget reductions due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Kim Dong-woo, Founder and CEO of BKT and Tomorrow Water. “It is very likely that large financial institutions and construction companies will cooperate to improve wastewater treatment infrastructure, as well as acquire needed space for data centers as public-private partnership projects.”
He added that BKT and Tomorrow Water are working to secure funding to develop the world’s first WRRF-data center system, and partnering with various domestic and overseas companies to promote sustainable development initiatives.
Last month, Tomorrow Water launched the second phase of its eponymous “Tomorrow Water Project” (TWP), a comprehensive development program aimed at converting sewage from a cost stream to a revenue stream for developing countries, by integrating low-energy wastewater systems along with technology to recover resources (including water, heat, energy, proteins and nutrients), and AI-powered water value chain improvements.
Phase One of the project, which launched in 2016, focused on individual wastewater treatment and resource recovery technology, including the rollout of its Proteus+ technology that converts wastewater solids into energy production feedstock through the process of carbon diversion.
