Johor made history with its first large-scale water reclamation plant dedicated to data centre operations in Ulu Tiram here.
Bridge Data Centres (BDC) president Eric Fan said the project, which began about 10 months ago, included a full pipeline system to transport municipal wastewater directly to its treatment facilities.
“We have all the pipelines transporting all the municipal wastewater to our treatment plants. We treat that to high-grade pure water to be used for our data centre.
“And that is overall a kind of demo project to help the Malaysian government, also the Johor government, to settle the water constraint issues for the industry. I think this is like a benchmark for the data centre sector.
“I think it’s the first in Malaysia and I believe nobody else has done this large size water reclamation plant for the purpose of data centres. It is specifically for the cooling process of data centres,” he told Bernama after a site visit to the water reclamation plant in Desa Cemerlang, Ulu Tiram here.
The visit was attended by deputy prime minister and energy transition and water transformation minister Fadillah Yusof.
Also present were menteri besar Onn Hafiz Ghazi and Johor investment, trade, consumer affairs and human resources committee chairman Lee Ting Han.
“What you see is only the plants, but there’s also pipeline construction that runs directly to the Pelangi Indah sewage treatment plant,” Fan said.
“This project is already running and is now in the final stage of testing and commissioning.”
He also said that the initiative promoted sustainability by using treated effluent that would otherwise be discharged, instead of sourcing water from rivers.
Under the project, four million litres per day of treated effluent from Indah Water Konsortium’s JB-Pelangi Sewage Treatment Plant will be supplied to the BDC water reclamation plant.
Johor Special Water Sdn Bhd meanwhile will oversee the delivery of the treated effluent and coordinate with local authorities for all necessary approvals. The reclaimed water will be used in BDC’s cooling operations.
