It is consumed because they evaporate it away and remove it from the local environment.
They easily could build near heating system or cooling the water down in another probably big facility close by and send it to the city
They easily could build near heating system or cooling the water down in another probably big facility close by and send it to the city
While this water usage might be not a big deal in places with abundant water, it could be problematic in some areas of the US.
Nope. While it's technically possible via natural gas fuel cells which are near 100% efficient in combined cycle electric / heat recovery use as compared to our city's existing ~35% efficient combined cycle natural gas fired steam turbine. And one such installation was proposed for this city in the 24MW range. Our beloved local citizens believed it, without reason and in open opposition to openly shared information to the contrary, to be a water guzzling/polluting, pollutant belching, energy consuming, mass surveillance enabling dystopian thing.
Flushed $120M in local investment down the toilet and signed up for worse air quality from ageing inefficient infrastructure because a datacenter is a big faceless thing that's safe to hate.