State regulators and local residents are watching the rollout of high‑performance data centers across North Carolina with a wary eye. Chemours, the company responsible for historic PFAS pollution in the Cape Fear River, is promoting a new fluorinated fluid, Opteon 2P50, for immersion cooling of AI‑intensive servers. While the company claims the closed‑loop system can cut water use by up to 90 % and dramatically lower energy consumption, a coalition of 17 environmental groups has asked the EPA to deny approval, citing potential releases during manufacturing, maintenance, and disposal.
Local concerns over water and chemical discharge
Residents such as Chapel Hill’s Laura McKelvey, a former EPA employee, worry that even a sealed system could leak or require maintenance that releases PFAS into groundwater. “I worry about discharge,” McKelvey said. “There’s leaks and there’s maintenance.”
What the technology entails
Immersion cooling submerges server hardware in a non‑conductive liquid that boils into vapor as the equipment heats up, then condenses back into liquid for reuse. Chemours says Opteon 2P50 is designed for sealed, closed‑loop installations that capture and reprocess the fluid, potentially eliminating the need for traditional water‑based cooling.
Regulatory and corporate responses
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has not yet approved Opteon 2P50, and Chemours has not provided the agency with the full technical data that WRAL requested, including emissions testing and loss‑rate estimates. The company estimates an annual evaporative loss of about 0.7 % but declined to confirm the figure.
In contrast, major tech firms planning North Carolina facilities are opting for more conventional cooling methods. Amazon’s proposed Richmond County data center will rely on outside air for most of the year and use evaporative cooling only on the hottest days, treating water with sodium hypochlorite before discharge. Microsoft, developing sites in Person and Catawba counties, says it does not add PFAS chemicals to its cooling operations and will use air‑cooled chillers with a closed, recirculating water loop.
State oversight and pending legislation
The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality reviews data‑center permit applications under existing federal and state environmental laws, but it has not clarified whether developers must disclose every chemical used in cooling systems. Senate Bill 730, which passed the House in June, would have required certain large facilities to adopt closed‑loop cooling to reduce water consumption, but the bill stalled after returning to the Senate.
As AI drives demand for ever‑more powerful chips, the balance between technological advancement, environmental stewardship, and community health remains a contentious issue for North Carolina’s lawmakers, regulators, and residents.
Original reporting: WRAL Raleigh — read the source article.
