Bitcoin mining profitability
5 ingenious ways Bitcoin miners are recycling heat from ASICs
Improving ASICs miners performance through heat repurposing
ASIC miners produce such immense amounts of heat that they require dedicated cooling systems to dissipate it.
Maintaining ASICs at low temperatures ensures high performance, avoids hardware damage and reduces fire hazards.
However, the mining community has taken temperature control one step further. Many miners have come up with ingenious ways to not only dissipate heat but even recycle it, improving their Bitcoin mining profitability and sustainability.
Here are five clever ways to recycle heat from your ASIC miners.
Space heating at home
Using ASICs to heat homes during the winter has become a popular strategy among the Bitcoin mining community.
By distributing the heat from Bitcoin mining across their house, miners can save electricity while keeping their ASICs running for extended periods. Instead of paying for the costs of heating systems, they heat their homes while earning BTC simultaneously.
Miners achieve this by installing ventilation pipes that redirect the heat directly from their ASICs to different sectors of their homes.
Water heating
Another way to repurpose heat from ASIC miners at home is water heating. This process is a little more complicated than space heating since it requires some form of heat transferring equipment — like an intercooler or a heat exchanger.
One possible method of transferring heat from ASIC miners to water systems is immersion cooling technology. With it, miners submerge their Bitcoin mining hardware in dielectric fluid that absorbs heat. The system then pumps the fluid to a heat exchanger that transfers the heat to a water circuit and returns the cooled-down fluid to the immersion bath.
Immersion cooling is one of the most effective ways to treat heat from ASIC miners. If you want to read more, check our article below.
Depending on the scale of the mining operation, miners can heat water for all kinds of purposes, from baths to entire swimming pools or hot tubs.
Greenhouse conditioning
Greenhouses are structures specially designed to preserve certain climatic and environmental conditions to grow vegetables, flowers, and fruits. They are often made of glass to let the sunlight through the walls and roof warm up the interior.
However, depending on the location and weather conditions, many greenhouses require supplemental heat. This is when Bitcoin mining comes in.
Similarly to home heating, miners can transfer heat from ASICs with an air duct system that connects their mining operation center to the greenhouse; or with immersion cooling technology through a heat exchanger.
Repurposing ASIC miners’ heat to facilitate the climatic conditions for vegetation growth is particularly helpful in cold weather locations with less sunlight time, like northern countries such as Canada, Finland, or Sweden.
Food and drink production
Besides greenhouses, other processes from the food and drink industries require consistent heating.
Food production systems like fish — aquaculture — , algae — hydroponics — and insect farming all involve supplementing heat and can be combined with a Bitcoin mining operation to provide it.
Another significant application for ASIC miners’ heat for the food industry is preservation. Some fruits and vegetables, for example, require drying and dehydration to prevent spoilage.
Additionally, Bitcoin mining enables these food industry processes to scale, allowing them to expand to regions with sub-optimal climatic conditions and to enjoy increased revenue from mining.
Perhaps the most creative way for ASICs’ heat for industrial purposes is whisky production. Distilling alcohol requires high temperatures, and distilleries often have dedicated heating systems.
However, the Canadian whisky company Shelter Point uses recycled heat from MintGreen’s ASIC miners in its production process.
Wood drying
Whether to use it as construction material or as fuel, wood needs to be dry first. This can be a long process, so lumber yards often rely on artificial drying methods.
Artificial or “oven” drying consists of storing the wood in thermally insulated chambers — called kilns. Once there, it is exposed to heat using natural gas or electricity through steam-heated heat exchangers.
As you can imagine, generating heat through this process involves considerable costs due to the additional energy required. ASIC miners can provide the necessary heat for wood drying while helping mitigate those losses through Bitcoin earnings.
Instead of using natural gas, ASICs’ heat is transferred into the kilns through corrugated air pipes, raising the temperature and drying the wood for its industrial purpose.
Closing thoughts: Bitcoin mining is moving forward
Bitcoin mining has reached the point of institutionalization. As a result, mining processes are becoming more professional. Miners are seeking maximum profitability and efficiency and making use of advanced technology.
Repurposing heat from ASIC miners is only one method of reducing waste from the mining process, and we’ve already seen many clever ways to achieve it.
It is only logical to expect that this type of solution will become more creative and efficient as we keep moving forward.
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