Bechtel, Nautilus partner on sustainable, high-performance data centers

Bechtel and Nautilus Data Technologies say they have reached a partnership to build high-performance, sustainable data centers.

The partners say their data center projects will use 70% less power for cooling and eliminate the consumption of drinking water. “The partnership will help to transform the environmental footprint of the data center sector and to close the digital divide by deploying to cities, rural communities and developing economies around the world,” according to a news release.

A closed-loop water cooling system uses naturally cold water to keep server racks cool. The system uses naturally cold water from rivers, lakes or bays, and returns all of it to its source after use.

“This is a dramatic improvement over the massive amounts of water—typically drinking water—consumed by the evaporative cooling systems currently used by data centers,” according to the release. “The system delivers additional environmental improvements including no refrigerants, no chemicals, no wastewater, no noise, and no harm to fish and wildlife.”

New York City has two very large buildings dedicated to answering the 911 calls of its five boroughs. With more than 11 million emergency calls annually, it makes perfect sense. The second of these buildings, the Public Safety Answering Center II (PSAC II) is located on a nine-acre parcel of land in the Bronx. It’s an imposing 450,000 square-foot structure—a 240-foot-wide by 240-foot-tall cube. The gleaming aluminum cube risesthe equivalent of 24 stories from behind a grassy berm, projecting the unlikely impression that it might actually be floating. Like most visually striking structures, the building has drawn as much scorn as it has admiration.