WATER SYSTEMS IN DATA CENTERS: Design, Risks, and Optimization

This book is written for the practitioners who design, operate, and optimize the water-based systems that make modern data centers possible: mechanical engineers, facilities managers, data center infrastructure engineers, and the architects who must balance reliability, efficiency, and safety in equal measure.

The chapters that follow cover the full landscape of water systems in data centers — from the fundamental trade-offs between water-cooled and air-cooled architectures, through the operational science of cooling tower optimization, the critical discipline of water treatment and Legionella control, the engineering of leak detection systems, and finally the specialized world of glycol-based cooling for high-density and edge deployments.

Each topic is approached from first principles, with practical guidance, design tables, and real-world case studies drawn from operating facilities. Whether you are commissioning a new hyperscale campus or retrofitting a legacy colocation floor, this reference aims to give you the knowledge to make better decisions about one of the most critical — and most overlooked — dimensions of data center infrastructure.