Ok, can we actually cool data centers with our pee?
Ok, can we actually cool data centers with our pee?
好吧，我们真的能用尿液来冷却数据中心吗？
In a cheeky marketing campaign, Liquid Death teamed up with former Philadelphia Eagles star Jason Kelce to share a solution to mitigate the environmental impact of AI data centers, which require massive quantities of water to prevent servers from overheating. “AI data centers waste millions of gallons of water,” Kelce quips in the video campaign. “That’s why Liquid Death and Garage Beer have teamed up. We want your pee to cool these data centers.”
在一场俏皮的营销活动中，Liquid Death 与前费城老鹰队球星杰森·凯尔西（Jason Kelce）合作，提出了一种缓解人工智能数据中心环境影响的方案。人工智能数据中心需要消耗大量水资源来防止服务器过热。凯尔西在视频广告中打趣道：“人工智能数据中心浪费了数百万加仑的水。这就是为什么 Liquid Death 和 Garage Beer 联手的原因。我们需要你的尿液来冷却这些数据中心。”
Then, as a crowd of people walk through a field sipping their branded beverages, they sing in unison: “Let’s pee on computers together to save humanity!” It’s a funny commercial. What’s even funnier is that Kelce has unwittingly stumbled upon a real tactic for cooling down data centers.
随后，一群人走在田野里，喝着他们品牌的饮料，齐声唱道：“让我们一起在电脑上撒尿，拯救人类吧！”这是一个有趣的广告。更有趣的是，凯尔西无意中触及了一种冷却数据中心的真实策略。
“The Liquid Death commercial is funny and tongue-in-cheek,” Michael Obradovitch, vice president of Data Center Global Accounts at Ecolab, told TechCrunch. “But in reality, there is a fair amount of alternative water sources already being used to a similar extent to cool these data centers.” These alternative water sources, when used in data centers, at least partially offset the demand for potable drinking water.
艺康集团（Ecolab）数据中心全球客户副总裁迈克尔·奥布拉多维奇（Michael Obradovitch）告诉 TechCrunch：“Liquid Death 的广告既幽默又带有讽刺意味。但实际上，已经有相当多的替代水源被用于冷却这些数据中心。”当这些替代水源被用于数据中心时，至少可以部分抵消对饮用水的需求。
One such alternative water source is recycled water, which is made by treating wastewater and sewage water so that they’re safe to use again. Wastewater and sewage water contain many things, including — you guessed it! — human urine. “You wouldn’t just use pee, but you can clean it and make it into useful water, and that’s what we advocate,” Bruno Pigott, executive director of the WateReuse Association and former acting assistant administrator in water for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), told TechCrunch.
其中一种替代水源是再生水，它是通过处理废水和污水使其达到安全使用标准而制成的。废水和污水中含有许多物质，包括——你猜对了！——人类尿液。“你不会直接使用尿液，但你可以将其净化并转化为有用的水，这正是我们所倡导的，”水回用协会（WateReuse Association）执行董事、美国环保署（EPA）前水务代理助理署长布鲁诺·皮戈特（Bruno Pigott）告诉 TechCrunch。
To be clear: you should not actually contribute gallons of your pee to help cool data centers, as Kelce facetiously suggests. But just for the sake of the thought experiment: what would happen if you did try to cool a data center with a steady stream of pee? “Pee contains all sorts of stuff. It contains salts, it contains urea, bacteria, organic matter of all sorts that can leave mineral deposits. If you just put that into a cooling tower or something else, it would require constant cleaning,” said Pigott. “One of the methods of cooling is called evaporative cooling, where hot air is passed through water to remove heat through evaporation. Can you imagine if you just poured urine through hot air?”
需要明确的是：你不应该真的像凯尔西开玩笑建议的那样，贡献数加仑的尿液来帮助冷却数据中心。但仅就思想实验而言：如果你真的尝试用源源不断的尿液来冷却数据中心会发生什么？皮戈特说：“尿液含有各种各样的东西。它含有盐分、尿素、细菌和各种有机物质，这些都会留下矿物质沉积。如果你直接把它放进冷却塔或其他设备中，就需要不断地进行清理。其中一种冷却方法叫蒸发冷却，即让热空气通过水，通过蒸发来带走热量。你能想象如果直接把尿液倒进热空气中会怎样吗？”
We do have the technology to turn our urine into potable drinking water — that’s what astronauts do in space, since they can only bring so much water with them on their spacecraft. But that isn’t efficient at a large scale, and even if it were, it’s not like scientists can just access millions of gallons of pee at will (well, not unless Kelce really commits to the bit). Instead, our toilet water ends up in wastewater and sewage. That’s where water treatment facilities come in, providing recycled water to spare us from the smell of evaporated urine.
我们确实拥有将尿液转化为饮用水的技术——宇航员在太空中就是这样做的，因为他们携带到航天器上的水有限。但这在大规模应用中并不高效，即便高效，科学家也不可能随意获取数百万加仑的尿液（除非凯尔西真的要把这个梗玩到底）。相反，我们的马桶水最终会进入废水和污水系统。这就是水处理设施发挥作用的地方，它们提供再生水，让我们免受尿液蒸发带来的异味困扰。
These facilities use membrane bioreactors, reverse osmosis, ultraviolet light, and other processes to treat water until it’s clean enough for industrial use. In some cases, this water can even be treated to the point that it’s drinkable. “We use recycled water for cooling for all kinds of industries, and we have for decades,” Dr. Greta Zornes, practice leader for water reuse at the engineering firm CDM Smith, told TechCrunch. “So this is only one application, but definitely, there’s been a boom in recycled water for data center cooling.”
这些设施使用膜生物反应器、反渗透、紫外线和其他工艺来处理水，直到其洁净程度足以用于工业用途。在某些情况下，这些水甚至可以被处理到可饮用的程度。工程公司 CDM Smith 的水回用业务负责人格蕾塔·佐恩斯（Greta Zornes）博士告诉 TechCrunch：“几十年来，我们一直将再生水用于各种行业的冷却。所以这只是其中一种应用，但毫无疑问，数据中心冷却对再生水的需求确实出现了激增。”
Though Zornes has worked on water reuse technology for more than two decades, her day-to-day work has shifted with the rising demand for data centers. “Every day right now, I’m working on recycled water for data centers,” she said. When data centers use more recycled water, they don’t pose as much of a burden to the local potable water supply. But industries can only pivot to recycled water use when there is proper infrastructure in place to treat millions of gallons of water every day.
尽管佐恩斯从事水回用技术研究已超过二十年，但随着数据中心需求的增长，她的日常工作重心也发生了转移。她说：“现在我每天都在处理数据中心的再生水项目。”当数据中心使用更多再生水时，它们对当地饮用水供应的负担就会减轻。但只有在具备了每天处理数百万加仑水的基础设施时，各行业才能转向使用再生水。
“You have to be somewhat near a waste water treatment facility that’s sizable enough that you have enough water to use,” Zornes said. “So when data centers go out into rural areas, a lot of times the wastewater treatment plants just aren’t big enough — they’re not treating enough water for them to be able to take it and treat it and use it.”
佐恩斯说：“你必须靠近一个规模足够大的废水处理设施，这样才有足够的水源可用。所以当数据中心进入农村地区时，很多时候当地的污水处理厂规模不够大——它们处理的水量不足以让数据中心获取、再处理并使用。”
Loudoun County, Virginia, located outside of Washington, D.C., is home to more than 250 data centers, with plans to construct at least another two dozen. As of 2025, Loudoun data centers collectively used about 200 million gallons of recycled water each day, but the water footprint of these data centers is so extreme that this only accounts for 43% of daily data center water usage in the area. The other 260 million gallons, or 57% of daily data center water usage, come from potable water supplies, according to Loudoun Water.
位于华盛顿特区郊外的弗吉尼亚州劳登县（Loudoun County）拥有超过 250 个数据中心，并计划再新建至少二十几个。截至 2025 年，劳登县的数据中心每天总共使用约 2 亿加仑再生水，但这些数据中心的用水量极其巨大，这仅占该地区数据中心每日用水量的 43%。据劳登水务公司（Loudoun Water）称，其余 2.6 亿加仑（即每日用水量的 57%）来自饮用水供应。
“There’s a lot of infrastructure that has to be built out and usually isn’t existing today, and that takes time” Zornes said. “That’s one of the problems — it’s just the time that it takes to get that done.”
佐恩斯说：“有很多基础设施需要建设，而这些设施目前通常并不存在，这需要时间。这就是问题所在——完成这些工作需要时间。”
Obradovitch thinks that the AI industry could even drive resources toward building out this kind of infrastructure to scale water treatment. Meta, for example, will invest at least $270 million in wastewater infrastructure projects near its data centers. “That’s where data centers can actually come in and be anchors of water infrastructure,” Obradovitch said. “There’s a number of cases and examples where data centers, as part of their engagement with communities, have committed funding and capital to some of these municipalities to help in addressing some of those exact challenges.”
奥布拉多维奇认为，人工智能行业甚至可以推动资源投入到此类基础设施的建设中，以扩大水处理规模。例如，Meta 将在其数据中心附近投资至少 2.7 亿美元用于废水基础设施项目。奥布拉多维奇说：“这就是数据中心可以介入并成为水利基础设施支柱的地方。有许多案例表明，数据中心作为其与社区互动的一部分，已向一些市政当局承诺提供资金和资本，以帮助解决这些具体挑战。”
On the policy side, Pigott is advocating for legislation that would provide a 30% tax credit to help industries scale their recycled water infrastructure.
在政策方面，皮戈特正在倡导立法，旨在提供 30% 的税收抵免，以帮助各行业扩大其再生水基础设施。