How to turn bitcoin mining into a more profitable and sustainable energy solution
Blockchain and crypto assets have garnered rising interest in the last year, and it’s not just amongst enthusiasts and small retailers anymore. While the adoption has been met with bearish sentiments from high-profile events such as the FTX saga, financial institutions continue to keep watch on the emergence of this rising asset.
While making profit from crypto products such as Defi and NFTs remain attractive, some are also vested in the bitcoin mining process as a primary source of asset generation. But how can one make bitcoin mining more sustainable?
New solutions for new technology
SAI is a clean computing company that is always investigating innovative ways to deal with the global demand for computing power. With the advent of popularity in bitcoin mining rigs, the demand for power became two-fold – one for the rigs and another for cooling them.
With their cutting-edge cooling technologies, SAI has created computing infrastructures that support these rigs with superior methods, such as immersion-cooling and rack-mounted water-cooling systems. The Tankbox, for example, prevents system overheating and temperature fluctuations with its solution, while reducing hardware events such as fan failure, noise, dust and corrosion typical of fan-cooling option. The enclosed unit not only stabilises the rigs but the Tankbox itself, giving businesses more reliability in the long run. There’s even a waste heat recovery system in place for when these can routed to other beneficial activities (as discussed later). By taking a more holistic view of the energy source, computing systems and Web 3.0 itself, SAI is able to drive sustainability and maximise value of information for the future.
Making bitcoin sustainable
Other than using renewable energy sources, there have been moves to make mining chips more energy-efficient. Otherwise, to many, the idea of a “green bitcoin infrastructure network” would be an oxymoron. But examining this area is important, because Business Insider reveals that although 90% of bitcoin has been mined, the last won’t be completed until 2140. That’s more than a century of energy use that can be investigated and saved upon.
Emerging companies, such as SAI, are facilitating these sustainable goals, proving that integrating bitcoin mining into existing energy models can be accomplished with the right innovation in tech and thinking. This is clean tech for the next evolution of bitcoin mining.
A better boiler for the heating industry
If you’ve seen pictures of bitcoin mining rigs, you often see large fans accompanying those setups. These giant direct air cooling systems are to dissipate the immense heat that comes from the specialised microchips or application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), and to cool them down to run more efficiently.
But why put a bandaid on a problem? Rather, chip heating has become a viable source of energy – so much so that North Vancouver, Canada, is working with local utility companies to heat its homes. By repurposing the natural heat production from the process, one transforms heat waste into a renewable energy source.
SAI achieves a 90% recycling rate of this with their Ultware solution and directs the heat energy to suitable applications. This produces a better boiler system that could for district use as a large-scale heating supplier, or for heating users themselves, such as shopping malls, agricultural greenhouses, airports, or factories.
Their patented manifold collector uses proprietary liquid cooling technology to cool and recover dissipated heat from the ASIC chips simultaneously. The recovered waste heat is then used in the scenarios above.
The cost-saving and environmental benefits are threefold: The module eliminates the cost of installing traditional fan cooler systems as well as the energy cost to run the setup, resulting in 50% saved on construction cost and total carbon emissions. It also recycles portions of the electrical energy used into heat energy, which one can work with local heating industry players for even more savings. And lastly, this will alleviate the use of fossil fuels in some scenarios for extra brownie points on the environmental front.
A better battery for renewable power sites
When carefully-planned, bitcoin mining rigs can actually become self-regulating gigs that help moderate power grid surplus and take up energy wastage.
As renewable energy infrastructures are being created, some will be placed in remote locations to harvest the renewable energy source, be it solar, wind or hydro. As grids get laid out, bitcoin mining rigs can balance out the excess and become profit-making modules. In some cases, like solar, they can enter as a value stream for projects with long interconnection queues. Profits generated by these modules can further the main project’s development.
SAI has channelled their expertise in efficient mining rigs into designing a compact and mobile plug-and-play model – TANKBOX/RACKBOX – that acts as an on-demand boiler, transforming these excess energy into digital assets. It allows energy investors an extra monetising stream for those stranded energy as they balance the dynamics of short-term power supply and demand from their consumers.
A better block for chip manufacturers
In the spirit of blockchain’s vision to provide equity and build community, collaborations can be a powerful driver to build better sustainable systems by tapping into each other’s specialisation.
For SAI, this would be proprietary innovation in the state-of-the-art liquid cooling and waste heat recovery system they have designed. By sharing the expertise behind this formula with chip manufacturers, it will realise the next generation of PCB solutions and empower conventional mining chips with higher energy efficiency and improved margins. With this embedded step up, the stage is set to break the bottleneck of traditional mining chips to produce greener chips.
Conclusion
By revisiting the premise of bitcoin mining and its role in the energy system, it is possible to see integration and fuel a sustainable future. By collaborating with heating industry players, renewable energy investors, blockchain system developers and advanced chip manufacturers, companies such as SAI can aim to build a sustainable infrastructure network for the bitcoin value chain to benefit investors, consumers and the environment alike.
Be a part of the clean-tech future with SAI, with one of the many solutions available to produce bitcoin mining that makes sense for our environment.