The world of technology is full of myths and legends. That’s understandable when most of the technology we rely on operates completely behind the scenes. Recently, I’ve been hearing a lot of talk around data centers, and many of the “facts” I’m hearing aren’t quite as true as some people believe.
Today, I want to address some of these myths, not to create division or try to win an argument, but instead to inform and clear up some misconceptions that are quite common within the conversation of technology and AI at the moment.
Myth #1: Data Centers Use Too Much Water and Take it Away From the Public
Water is a huge topic of discussion around data centers at the moment, but very few people actually know how data centers use water for cooling. I can’t speak for all data centers, but I can speak about the two types of Meta data centers that I have visited over the past few months.
- A traditional air-cooled compute data center: These facilities use water for only a few months of the year to cool down air as it passes into the building.
- An AI-optimized closed-loop liquid cooled data center: These facilities circulate a water and glycol mixture around a closed-loop system, meaning that the cooling loop is sealed, so water isn’t consumed as it circulates, passing the cold liquid over the server hardware until it gets warm, then sending it over to the heat rejection system. The heat rejection system cools the liquid and then sends it back to the servers in a continuous loop. I visited an infra lab to take a deeper look at liquid cooling and saw first-hand how this closed-loop system recirculates water in a sealed loop, using very little on an ongoing basis.
Source: https://about.fb.com/news/2026/10/debunking-the-biggest-data-center-myths/