Can Recycled Wastewater Help Cool AI Data Centres?

A joke about cooling AI data centres with human urine has an unexpected connection to real-world water technology. A new Liquid Death and Garage Beer campaign featuring former NFL star Jason Kelce asks people to donate their pee to cool data centres, while also making clear that people should not actually send urine to the facilities.

Raw urine would not make a practical data centre coolant. It contains salts, urea, bacteria, and other materials that can leave deposits in cooling equipment and create maintenance problems. Treated wastewater, however, is already used for industrial cooling and can reduce the amount of drinking water that data centres consume.

Recycled wastewater is the practical version of the idea

Wastewater treatment systems can process sewage containing urine and other waste until the resulting recycled water is suitable for industrial uses. Treatment can involve technologies such as membrane bioreactors, reverse osmosis, and ultraviolet disinfection, depending on the required water quality.

Turning urine back into usable water is not new. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have long relied on systems that recover water from urine, reducing the amount of fresh water that must be transported from Earth. Applying that approach directly to millions of gallons of separately collected human urine on the ground would be far less practical than processing wastewater that already flows through municipal treatment systems.

Data centres can reduce demand for drinking water

Reclaimed water is particularly useful for facilities that rely on evaporative cooling, where water helps remove heat generated by servers. Using recycled supplies can reduce pressure on potable water systems, an increasingly important issue as AI infrastructure construction accelerates.

Northern Virginia illustrates both the potential and the limitations. Loudoun County is home to one of the world’s largest concentrations of data centres, and Loudoun Water supplies both potable and reclaimed water to support the area’s growing infrastructure. The county’s rapid data centre expansion has also intensified debate over water, electricity and land use, as documented in recent reporting on the local backlash.

The challenge is infrastructure. A data centre needs access to a wastewater treatment system capable of producing enough reclaimed water and, in many cases, dedicated pipelines to move that water to the facility. That can be difficult in rural areas where wastewater plants are smaller, or the required distribution network does not exist.

Tech companies are investing in water infrastructure.

Some major technology companies are investing in local water systems as their data centre footprints expand. Meta says it has committed more than $270 million to water and wastewater infrastructure through projects in Idaho and Louisiana, including more than $70 million for a treatment facility in Kuna, Idaho, and more than $200 million in local infrastructure around its Richland Parish, Louisiana, data centre.

Policy proposals could also encourage wider adoption of recycled water. The Advancing Water Reuse Act proposes a 30% investment tax credit for manufacturers and other industrial users that expand the use of recycled water in place of freshwater.

Water use is also becoming part of a wider public debate over AI infrastructure. A 2026 Gallup survey found that seven in 10 Americans opposed the construction of AI data centres in their local area, with environmental concerns among the reasons cited by opponents.

So the answer to Liquid Death’s joke is straightforward: pouring untreated urine into a data centre cooling system is not a realistic solution. Treating wastewater that contains it, however, is already a viable way to reduce the amount of drinking water used to cool computing infrastructure.