Topic: New mining venture - consultation sought (Read 530 times)

Ok, I'll see what I can do......still very much at the embryonic stage though. But posting here will probably serve as an unofficial 'push' for me to get things do

Is there a chance of you keeping and regularly posting a modest, anonymous log of this project? I would find the adventure to be incredibly interesting to read about.

All the spills, thrills and chills would be riveting, as would a breakdown of the financial side as your effort unfolds. We could vicariously live the life of a Crypto explorer through your reports :-)

Ja. Yes the initial up-front costs are a bit higher because of using (preferably redundant) pumps and the large dry cooler plus a small basic PLC for monitoring temp/flow/other things status to keep an eye on the operations and phone home to report as needed. But the massive increase in reliability and near zero maintenance makes it perfect for unattended remote operations.

Speaking of reliability and getting what you pay for of course Canaan and their Avalon miners comes to mind. The Avalons stand out as being utterly reliable with very few failures reported vs Bitmain, Innosilicon and others. Canaan has already made announcements about immersion cooling the 841 series and I recall recently seeing mention somewhere about Canaan offering an immersion cooled A10 series version.
edit: Found the Twitter feed from Canaan about the A1047 immersion cooled miner dated July 24th this year.

I highly suggest you talk to Steven Mosher  [email protected] who is Canaan's Director of Global Marketing. He is very open to communications and is a regular here in the Forum regarding major topics involving the Avalons. I think he and his company would be very interested in this venture...

As for apprecieation, well I do have a tips jar BTC address  1FuzzyWc2J8TMqeUQZ8yjE43Rwr7K3cxs9 in my sig....  

I sure can, thanks I'll send over some details.

Apart from giving out merits how else can one like or thumbs up a response? Thanks again for such a detailed answer.

I hope he chooses immersion, given his energy savings it would be well worth the investment. There's an old saying "You get what you pay for".

Ref https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooling_tower and this maker (one of many many) https://jcequipments.com/dry-cooling-tower-india.html
A dry tower simply does not use any water running over the outside of the heat exchanger that is transferring heat from the fluid to the outside air. Wet or more correctly, evaporative, cooling towers are only needed if one must produce fluid temps lower than ambient outside air temps. One company that already does the whole package for miners is https://www.engineeredfluids.com/for-crypto-currency

The temps I stated are the chip temps. Because miners are normally using air cooling and have rather limited sized heatsinks inside of them that is what sets the typical ambient air temp restrictions. Any sort of liquid cooling massively increases the effectiveness of a heat sink.

Well, BitFury's farms ARE all liquid cooled.
Why don't others do it? Aside from the time it takes to remove fans and plug in a fan simulator (to keep cgminer happy) for each miner, no idea. Seems a no-brainer to me especially if you are putting miner containers into remote areas.

Ya the fluids used to cool the miners are not cheap but still, I see no downside to it.

As for sizing the cooling tower, easy: determine how much power you are feeding the miners ( I read somewhere a typical small well can support up to around 250kw), convert to BTU's (1kw = 3412.142 BTU's), know the maximum outside air temp where the miners & towers are located, use say 60C as maximum desired fluid outlet temp from the tower and give that info to the cooling tower manufacturer.  While they will also need to know the flow rate the coolant moves at (depends on the size of miner tanks and thermal characteristics of the fluid used) they can then provide the correctly sized tower to do what you need.

Oh, and here is an announcement from a Canadian company that is doing flare gas powered mining: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/01/22/1298376/0/en/Cryptocurrency-Mining-Operation-Launched-by-Oil-and-Gas-Producer-Iron-Bridge-Resources.html
and
https://www.jwnenergy.com/article/2018/1/junior-producer-leverages-cheap-natural-gas-mine-cryptocurrencies-rock-bottom-prices/

@BitcoinRefiner...we still can't PM each other.....can you reach me on ozoro99atgmail?

@Notfuzywarm.....what's a dry cooler tower? For real.....miners can run in excess of 50C without fans or A/C's ? what's the downside? why don't all miners use immersion cooling?

the concept seems very interesting and dare I say revolutionary.

@WhyFhy....once again you come up trumps......I've checked out your link and I am waiting to hear back from them. But they're boasting they can reduce CapEx by 25%......maybe on the more expensive and larger roll-outs. But we wait and see what they've got to offer.....sounds really good in all manner of ways...deployment, cost, efficiency, etc

The major advantage to immersion cooling is that it eliminates all issues with using filter walls to clean the massive airflow miners normally require. The only airflow component is the dry cooling tower that sits outside. With a dry cooler no water is flowed over the hot exchanger, just uses high airflow and the exchanger itself cannot clog.

For ref, a dry cooler can be used because miners are quite happy running at chip temps over 60C and it is not uncommon to see 90-100C chip temps. That means that the coolant used does not have to be chilled in any way (no water/refrigeration) and even if it is 50C (122F) outside as long as the tower can keep chip temps in range you are golden. Since with immersion the chip temps pretty much = the coolant temp you can actually be circulating very warm/hot fluid and the chips will be perfectly happy.

Ran into this.
https://submer.com/knowmore?gclid=Cj0KCQjwvo_qBRDQARIsAE-bsH_DA0VMTSzPFkOhtlfDRmtJpMjsLJi1tzbsdBOG5k0dm1MaIPY2f6QaAlraEALw_wcB
I'm sure it cost an arm and a leg but would put you on the right track quick. I've never seen the vendors until researching today.
Few quotes from the site


Put it on stilts, cover it (breatheable) ,  Slap a genny on it or tie in, buy equipment ,deploy , set and forget.

Glad it was useful, Phil filled in great advice considering your area might be prone to flash floods not sure if your in the high ground or not. Either way raising things up is the way to go, nobody wants a wet mine. I second the other part as well, for new gear anyways. As soon as you are committed and moving forward place a pre-order for the gear as most gear won't ship until November. This way you can also watch the market for used gear if you go that route. Feel free to PM me if you have questions I'll do my best to help if I can.

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This is off-topic. Hopefully you stick around the forum, it's always nice to see new people coming in here. You might have sorted it but a couple posts on the first page your replies are within the quote - to fix that just be sure to start typing after the [/quote]. I reformatted it in the quote above if that makes sense.

I gave you 2 merits. Should take you out of newbie status more quickly.

You have a merit to give. Try to find a newbie that looks good and give him a merit.

It will help him out like I helped you out.

Thank you sooo much everybody for very useful comments, I will PM those who have asked me to reach out to them. Am a newbie on this forum, so am just learning about 'merits', I'll be dishing them out if my newbie status allows.

I welcome more comments and advice.

Cheers everybody

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@bitcoinrefiner......please reach me ozoro99atgmail

Cheers

Energy rates are not an issue for the OP as they are using normally flared waste gas to power on-site generators. Of course the generators should be rated for Prime-power usage so they can 24x7 run for months between scheduled maint.

I'm developing projects in South Africa and Senegal at the moment. Africa's a great and untapped region.

You are welcome to get in touch if you want to compare notes.

I can't message you with my contact information as you have PM's from newbie's disabled and I'm not very active on here.

Either way, I'm sure you'll succeed and there is no shortage of information and friendly people here to offer advice.

If your energy rates are similar to the ones I've seen in Africa, most concerns discussed can be mitigated by throwing money at it. The critical factor is that you are familiar with business in the region and it sounds like you are.

Throw me a PM with some contact details if you'd like to talk.

Im out of merit!!!!!! Get this man some merit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fantastic information, you guys are brilliant!!

Buy 20 or more  m20s. They come in November.

They cost about 54000 plus shipping for 20 of them.

You can set up a cooling plan along with a building.

You need a generator since you are burning free fuel.

20 m20s use 67 to 70 kwatts.

If you have a 100kwatts generator it should cover that.


If you use a container.

Put it on six foot stilts.

Draw air from the floor as air is shaded.

Blow air out high in the container

Or put a small peak A shaped  roof on container to shade it.

It is important to have containers on stilts

AIDS in cooling and prevents floods.

I would stagger the build.

Add 20 m20s at a time since it gives you some safety for loss or delay of shipments.

Maybe two containers with two generators
Set them two to three months apart.

Stuff breaks
Stuff breaks.

If you buy m20s buy some spare parts.

I own

S17
T17
S15
T15
M20s
M21s
M10
S9

I have spare parts for the gear above.

I have
Avalon a1041
Avalon a921
Avalon a721
No spare parts from them they tend to not break

I have

Inno t3t39th
Inno t2t24th
Inno t3t50th

No spare parts but gear is clocked low.

@steamtyme,
thank you very much for your detailed response.
I will study the cold aisle/hot aisle you've mentioned. The temperatures will regularly top 35°C and it's  humid with heavy downpours.
am looking to start ASAP ...the halving is scary, but hopefully it will eventually result in higher prices.

thanks for the list.

Cheers

I agree but at a 300k budget I think he could wing it remotely after some initial smoothing over at first.