A team at NYU Tandon School of Engineering has proposed a cooling system for data centers that works like this: take zeolites, a class of porous crystalline minerals already used in water treatment and oil refining, dry them out using waste heat from a nearby factory, truck the dried material to a data center, and let it absorb moisture from the cooling loop. The process pulls heat out of the air without running compression chillers. According to the paper published on ChemRxiv in January 2026, the approach can reduce data center cooling electricity consumption by up to 86%.
That is a striking number. It deserves scrutiny.
The concept operates in three stages. First, zeolite beds are "charged" at an industrial facility, such as a chemical plant or refinery, using low-to-medium-temperature waste heat below 200 degrees Celsius. Heating the zeolite drives off adsorbed water, resetting the material to a dry state. Second, the dried zeolite is transported by truck or rail to a data center. Third, warm air or coolant from the server room passes over the zeolite, which adsorbs the moisture and, in doing so, acts as a heat sink. The adsorption process replaces the work that compression chillers would otherwise perform.
Zeolites do not lose their stored energy over time. Unlike phase-change materials or chilled water, the thermal energy remains locked in the mineral structure until water is reintroduced. That property makes the material suitable for both long-duration storage and transport over meaningful distances.
The researchers, led by Dr. Gilvan Farias Neto, Prof. Pavel Kots, and Prof. Dharik Mallapragada, modeled the system across a range of scenarios. For the data center alone, cooling electricity consumption dropped by as much as 86%. When accounting for both the data center and the industrial facility whose waste heat charges the zeolite, the combined electricity reduction exceeded 75%. PUE improved by 12 percentage points in the modeled scenarios.
Even after factoring in the energy required to haul tons of zeolite between sites, the system delivered net electricity savings exceeding 40% in many configurations. That calculation assumed the use of modern electric trucks. With diesel transport, the savings would be lower.
A geospatial analysis of U.S. facilities found that the median distance between data centers and the ten nearest industrial waste heat sources is 57 kilometers, roughly 35 miles. That is a manageable trucking distance, though the logistics of continuously cycling zeolite between sites would require coordination that does not exist in the data center industry today.
The system consumes more water overall, roughly 15 to 25% more, because evaporation is central to the cooling mechanism. The researchers note that the industrial facility sees a significant reduction in its own water use, since waste heat diverted into charging zeolite would otherwise be dumped through cooling towers. Whether that redistribution of water consumption satisfies regulators in water-stressed regions is an open question.
The proposal is still at the modeling stage. Zeolite beds must be engineered for durability, rapid heat transfer, and thousands of adsorption-desorption cycles. Coordinating operations between data centers and industrial partners would require new logistics frameworks and business models. The research team has begun speaking with industry participants about scaling the concept, but no pilot installation has been announced.
The mineral itself is cheap and abundant. Whether the system around it can be made cheap and reliable enough for commercial deployment is the question that separates an 86% efficiency gain on paper from one that shows up on an operator's electricity bill.