Li's review, titled "The feasibility and prospects of coal mine water as a cooling medium for data centers," estimates that China’s data‑centre water demand will rise from about 1.3 billion cubic metres in 2024 to over 3 billion by 2030, driven by exponential growth in cloud, HPC and AI workloads.
China’s coal sector churns out roughly 4.7 billion tonnes of raw coal each year, and miners produce about two tonnes of water per tonne of coal. That translates to roughly 9.4 billion cubic metres of mine water in 2023, with projections reaching 12.96 billion cubic metres in 2030—enough to satisfy the entire cooling demand of the country’s expanding data‑centre fleet.
The study details a treatment pathway that brings mine water into compliance with liquid‑cooling specifications. Advanced electro‑chemical and membrane processes would reduce ammonia, calcium hardness and chloride ions to acceptable levels, costing roughly 1.37 yuan per cubic metre compared with 3.87 yuan for municipal water. The authors project a payback period of 4.6–8.8 years for the necessary infrastructure.
On the environmental front, modelling suggests that if data‑centres improve their power‑usage effectiveness from 1.6 to 1.2 while integrating regional wind power, the combined effect could cut annual carbon emissions by 93.8 percent. The figure, however, reflects a package of upgrades—not just the switch to mine water.
The paper concludes that the next logical step is pilot testing. A Shanghai‑based data‑centre operator, Anika Patel, says the company is preparing a 100‑MW facility to trial coal‑mine water cooling in early 2025, hoping to prove the concept under real‑world operating conditions.