Posted on 02/04/2015 9:08:53 PM PST by Colofornian
Edited on 02/04/2015 11:02:54 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Then it just disappears never to be seen again. They should charge them more until they put it back.
Yep...sad...hope yer well, stay safe !
Anyone have a clue of its coordinates?
Mebbe they just don’t want to talk about using it for the hot tub toga parties...
Pretty sure this is it on Google maps: https://goo.gl/maps/iHYsa
Bing version: http://binged.it/1I7hyme
It was Camp Williams airstrip previously. (Switch to Bing’s “birds eye” view & you can still see the old airstrip).
Cut ‘em off!! http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/11/utah-lawmaker-wants-to-shut-off-nsas-water-supply-for-good/
Recycling? http://fox13now.com/2014/05/12/bluffdale-to-recycle-some-nsa-water/
That is some very serious electronics cooling going on. It is the NSA Memory Death Star of privacy invasion.
Well, the water usage increased but the water volume once used is the same as the water volume before use.
the change is an increase in temperature rather than a decrease in volume
You may be right, but I always thought the cooling effect was a phenomenon of evaporation that does the cooling.
C ‘mon NSA, just jiggle the handle once in a while. sheesh!
Thanks for the pictures. I googled water evaporation and temperature reduction and it seems the cooling does come from the evaporation having to do with energy states, etc. That’s why there is so much surface area on these chillers.
My guess is that there is a significant reduction in water amount after having been through these.
Another thing you might have seen is some of the outdoor places in LV using fine misters spread around the tables, etc. These mists pretty much evaporate completely and cool the surrounding air volume....
No, it is not inefficient. And no, they almost certainly aren’t just “flushing the water down the drain” as you suggest.
Evaporating water to cool the water left behind is a key part of most large commercial/institutional HVAC systems. That’s why there are cooling towers on top of / next to said structures.
Evaporating water to provide condenser cooling is wildly more thermodynamically efficient than cooling a fluid with air across a heat exchanger, as you suggest. Sometimes there are reasons to do it, but it is certainly not preferred for a large system like this.
At the water consumption rate they quoted, the system should be using a cooling tower for indirect cooling of the computers. Also, air cooling would not be an efficient choice as you need a greater than 50 deg F approach temperature.
If I were designing a system for this, I would use cooling tower water to heat exchange against a mechanical chiller with the chiller having a closed loop running to the electronic equipment.
I know. Just thinking big goobermint types need to be more obedient to the laws they think we’re going to honor than they expect of us. The farmers don’t destroy the water either. It still continues to circulate in the water cycle.
I tend to like to use cooling water (or water cooled by cooling water with a heat exchanger, or even a closed loop cooling tower) rather than chilled water with electronic stuff. Often the cooling water is cool enough to remove enough heat without the risk of condensing water out of the ambient air onto the insides of the electronic stuff (plus much cheaper per BTU than refrigerated chilled water).
The water is evaporated in cooling towers to cool the left-behind water to run through the chillers’ condensers. Large water chillers are where the refrigeration happens. These would be large centrifugal chillers for an installation like this, almost certainly. The evaporator side of the chiller would make chilled water, that is a separate closed loop (condenser/cooling tower side would be open). The chilled water would feed air handlers with chilled water coils serving the computer room.
Back to the water question, some is blown down to drain, as the water left behind at some point has too large a concentration of minerals and contaminants. But most of it is evaporated in cooling towers.
The low-level heat produced is unsuitable for economical electrical power generation. While technically possible, it’s just not do-able on a rational basis.
Is the water being re-cycled as in Green Conservation?
The evaporative effect is what works for us in the Summer time as we sweat...that's one way. But a heat exchanger uses a different principle in a closed loop system.
The chillers are inside in a mechanical room somewhere. Something like this, almost certainly:
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.