I’m John from Flux Cap Energy Tech (FCET), and I’m reaching out to the community to talk about an area I think is key to the future of Bitcoin mining—heat reuse and energy recovery.
As many of you know, mining operations generate significant heat, and managing it efficiently is becoming more critical as energy costs continue to rise. At FCET, we’re working on solutions that not only address heat management but also recover energy from waste heat, turning it into usable power. This could mean reduced cooling costs, more efficient operations, and potentially even offsetting part of your energy consumption.
I’m curious to hear your thoughts on heat reuse—what strategies are you using in your setups? Are there specific pain points or opportunities you see in making heat management more efficient in mining operations? And would a solution that integrates energy recovery into heat management be something you’d consider for your operation?
This is something I am interested in, if I understood your other comment correctly, you said you want to directly convert the waste heat into energy, do you mean for things like underfloor heating or running a generator? Immersion and water cooling plates are perfect for those things but right now (with my knowledge so correct me if I’m wrong) it wouldn’t be hot enough to generate power. With my S19 and L7 I could get true water temps of 55c in a 20L drum, the Bitmain KS5 runs a bit hotter, but not enough. Maybe the results could be better with a heat exchanger making a hot tank and keeping the miner cooler on a cold tank with radiator, but if you have any ways to make the water hotter without additional power input I’d love to hear it. My bet is that in the future there will be miners that will run at 130c+ designed specifically for a Bitmain container that will be oil cooled to a heat exchanger that runs water on the other side with the aim of turning the water into steam to run a steam powered generator to bring power consumption down, I think that will happen when mining efficiency hits a wall. Cheers mate
I am new to mining and am looking to use hydro miners to heat my swimming pool. I currently use about 48,000 kilowatt hours a year to keep the pool warm and I think it would be nice to heat the pool and make money!!!
hey there ShredZ, You’re right to think that the temperature differences are a bit low for current heat engine/power generation methods. There are two leading existing methods that exist for converting heat at a low temperature difference (Low-grade heat) into power: Organic Rankine Cycle, and thermoelectric. Thermoelectric conversion can work on very low temperature differences, but is extremely inefficient. ORC starts to have about 10% efficiency around 150 degrees C temp difference. We’re working on something new, which should significantly eclipse these numbers in terms of efficiency. I guess for the info I’m trying to gather, my question to you would be, what kind of payback period would you look for out of such a power converting device?
It would also provide the heat-transfer away from the computers, or we would partner for example with a liquid immersion device.
There are ways of stepping up the temperature difference, as you’re suggesting, and it can be advantageous for heat re-use, like using the heat for hot water, or heating a home, but it wouldn’t make sense for making power, because it requires input energy.
Very interesting, in terms of payback I would say 5 years, however I’m probably not your target audience as I only run 10kw. I’d also be interested in this on my generator, I want to put a radiator on my generac with a heat exchanger.
I guess that’s another point, is this something that could make mining on natural gas generators more efficient? I’m assuming your system will have a kw or btu heat rating of some sort, if you’re mining off a generator and also have a heat exchanger on your generator it’s a double whammy. You said eclipse 10%, so let’s say you can produce 20% efficiency, if you also take the heat from a generator then that would be 40%, of course it comes down to local gas and fuel prices, but that’s cool to think. Keep us posted, I’ll follow along for sure