University of Texas researchers model oilfield wastewater as a cooling source for AI data centers

AI data centers are thirsty, and Texas is starting to notice. A new study from the University of Texas at Austin suggests a possible fix: cool the servers with water nobody else wants. The researchers modeled how desalinated brackish groundwater and oil and gas wastewater could supply data center cooling. Their conclusion is that it may be workable, at a modest cost to the facilities’ energy budgets. What the researchers found The paper appeared online in the journal Water Research in September 2026. UT Austin publicly announced the findings on October 8, 2026. Mechanical engineering professor Vaibhav Bahadur led the work. His team looked at established desalination methods, chiefly reverse osmosis, to see whether they could produce usable cooling water for data centers. The other water source in the study is produced water. That is the briny water that comes up from wells alongside oil and gas, a byproduct the industry has to deal with one way or another. According to the study, the energy and cost of treating these water sources would represent only a small fraction of a data center’s overall energy demand. A new way to measure the strain The team also introduced a new metric cal...