Waste heat utilization
The number 1 game changer
We analyse and closely observe the global market for mining hardware and software, along with the latest developments in recent months in the field of water and oil cooling. For the first time, this enables effective, efficient professional heat recovery.
Why can this be a disruptive technology IN DECENTRALIZED ENERGY SYSTEMS?
Sector coupling: electricity and heat
In total, 182 billion kWh of electricity were used for heating in Germany in 2020. That was 13% of the total electricity consumption. Due to general electrification, this percentage will increase in the future. According to the most recent figures in Germany, this electricity comprises 48,5% renewable energy.
The mining industry, which also uses electricity to generate Bitcoin and heat, uses electricity that comprises 58.8% renewable energy.
Above all, the mining industry has developed in this direction of its own accord, without being required to do so by external agencies. It will continue to use more renewable energy in the future, since it is very affordable and is therefore a decisive factor for the profitability of the mining.
Water and oil cooling not only allows the miners to be clocked at a higher rate in order to achieve higher performance (hashrate), but it is also an efficient method of utilizing waste heat from the chips.
The heat can then be integrated in a company’s own in-house processes, for example to provide additional support for a heat pump and ultimately be fed into central buffer tanks. What’s more, if there should be a downtime of or maintenance work on the primary heating source, the integrated BTC data centre always provides back-up heating as a second source.
And, quite incidentally, it generates a desirable waste product: Bitcoin!
Examples of where mining and waste heat can play a role
Intelligent controlling
The number 2 game changer
Here in the first German Bitcoin Energy Lab, we research the ideal conditions for waste heat recovery and its use in conjunction with intelligent mining control. This control system is intended as a forward-looking way to regulate generation and consumption, in part using artificial intelligence (AI). The goal is to make smart, automated decisions in the industrial mini-grid in the style of a virtual power plant.
The result: we can calculate the optimum applications and the smooth, extremely flexible switching of mining as a power consumer with regard to feed-in, storage usage, spot market assessment, heat conversion (booster heat pump) and pure mining usage.
A passion for detail
Bitcoin Energy Lab
In our Energy Lab, we work with a wide range of state-of-the-art miner models. Half of them are fully immersed in a dielectric liquid, while others are converted from air cooling to water cooling (second life-cycle). Four high-performance units are available ex works with water cooling for test series and test setups.
At full load, the Energy Lab achieves an output of 65 kW. This decentralized Bitcoin data centre works and generates Bitcoin with an output of 2 petahash/second, which corresponds to 2000 terahash/second.
To achieve this, the miners use the existing cooling technology of the industrial processes, which means the supply temperature is variable and can be regulated as required. The data centre therefore represents an additional integrated black box that has cooling requirements and produces heat.
One of the subjects our research focuses on is the use of the waste heat generated by the mining process. The waste heat is fed into a buffer storage for use in production processes, thus increasing energy efficiency and reducing the impact on the environment.
In the long term, significantly less use should be made of fossil fuels and dependence on heating oil or gas providers should be reduced.
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