Re:XAI Campus in Memphis May Use 1M Gallons of Auqifer Drink...
by quantified on Thursday June 06, 2024 @09:44PM
(#40604517)
Since this is a municipal water supply, agricultural comparisons are not that helpful. It's the equivalent of adding 2,500 households, or 10,000ish citizens. Memphis population is about 610,000, so it's not a huge jump. A year's influx from somewhere else? That said, it's a lot more than nothing. I wonder what the pollution load is from it.
Re:XAI Campus in Memphis May Use 1M Gallons of Auqifer Drink...
by davidcbc on Friday June 07, 2024 @04:24PM
(#40612605)
> a standard olympic sized swimming pool holds about 660,000 gallons, so that's less than 2 Olympic swimming pools or three acre-feet of water per day
You don't drain and refill an olympic swimming pool every single day
How about a better comparison: a standard olympic sized swimming pool holds about 660,000 gallons, so that's less than 2 Olympic swimming pools or three acre-feet of water per day. According to [1], an acre-foot of water is enough to supply two families in California for a year, so that's 4 x 365 = 1460 families worth of water per year (not including the water it takes to manufacture all the things they use and grow all the things they eat).
According to [2] it takes 600,000 gallons of water to grow 200 bushels of corn on 1 acre, so the XAI campus uses about 2 x 365 = 730 acres of corn worth of water per year. According to [3], farmers planted over 90 million acres of corn in 2019 so back of the napkin, the XAI campus uses 730/90,000,000 = 0.0008% as much water as just the US corn industry. Not all of agriculture, just corn.
Honestly doesn't sound like that much. If it's more than a datacenter and has offices, it might use less water than it takes to feed the people in the building.
[1] https://www.watereducation.org/aquapedia/acre-foot
[2] https://agresearchmag.ars.usda.gov/2011/aug/water
[3] https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2019/07/29/corn-americas-lar...