TYSONS, Va. (WOWO) — Shumate Engineering says it has received a new U.S. patent protecting the operational functionality of its Hybrid-Dry/Adiabatic-Cooling system, which the company says can significantly reduce water and energy use in data centers.

The utility patent, issued in July 2026 according to the company, follows a 2025 patent that protected the physical design of the cooling technology.

Shumate says the system can reduce water consumption by 93%, cooling power use by 50% and total connected power by 15% compared with conventional cooling systems.

The technology was co-invented by R. Stephen Spinazzola, the company’s director of mission critical services, and Justin Penrod, director of mechanical engineering.

The system uses a closed-loop design with separate water temperatures to support both traditional air-cooled computer systems and direct-to-chip liquid cooling. Shumate says it can deliver 68-degree water for traditional air-cooled systems and 90-degree water for direct-to-chip liquid cooling, with the two flows sharing a common return.

The system can also switch between cooling modes based on outdoor conditions. During cooler weather, it uses outside air in economizer mode. During warmer conditions, an evaporative function provides additional cooling, according to Shumate.

The company says the technology can provide simultaneous cooling for legacy air-cooled infrastructure and newer liquid-cooled systems while reducing water consumption through a dry-first approach.

Shumate also estimates the 15% reduction in total site power could result in about $1 billion in utility savings for an 800-megawatt artificial intelligence data center, based on the company’s stated assumptions.

The company says it is working on 16 new data center projects this year in Texas, Missouri and Arizona, representing a combined 5.7 gigawatts of processing power.

Shumate Engineering is a Virginia-based MEP engineering firm specializing in mission-critical and data center environments.