Microsoft plans to deploy a zero-water evaporation design in its upcoming data centers.

The closed loop system will first be piloted at its under-construction data centers in Phoenix, Arizona, and Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, in 2026.

All Microsoft data centers designed from August 2024 will use the new design, expected to come online from late 2027. Existing facilities will remain a mix of air-cooled and water-cooled systems.

In its latest sustainability report, Microsoft said that it consumed more than 125 million liters of water per year per data center, with an average water usage effectiveness (WUE) of 0.30 L/kWh.

"By adopting chip-level cooling solutions, we can deliver precise temperature control without water evaporation," Steve Solomon, VP of data center infrastructure engineering at Microsoft, said.

"These new liquid cooling technologies recycle water through a closed loop. Once the system is filled during construction, it will continually circulate water between the servers and chillers to dissipate heat without requiring a fresh water supply."

Solomon added: "The shift to the next-generation data centers is expected to help reduce our WUE to near zero for each data center employing zero-water evaporation."

Moving from evaporative systems to mechanical cooling is expected to increase the power usage effectiveness (PUE) of the data center design.

"However, our latest chip-level cooling solutions will allow us to utilize warmer temperatures for cooling than previous generations of IT hardware, which enables us to mitigate the power use with high efficiency economizing chillers with elevated water temperatures," Solomon said.

There is also expected to be a "nominal increase" in data center power usage as a result. However, the company said that it was working on other innovations to provide "more targeted cooling" and reduce power usage.

In October, the company announced that it was also trialing the deployment of cross-laminated timber construction in the data center.