BitFury announces largest immersion cooling project

BitFury recently announced that it will soon launch the world’s largest two-phase immersion cooling project.

As part of BitFury’s previous $100 million investment to build a 100-megawatt bitcoin mining data center in Georgia, the company will use 3M Novec fluids to cool the more than 40MW (megawatts) of heat generated by mining.

The project was planned by Allied Control, an immersion cooling technology startup that BitFury acquired in January this year. The project will help miners reduce energy costs.

BitFury CEO瓦列里·瓦维洛夫said in a statement:

“We have taken many steps to optimize our infrastructure to ensure that blockchain can process transactions securely… These experiences and technologies will be very useful for building the next generation of data centers and high-performance supercomputers.”

The first phase is expected to achieve a power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.02, meaning that for every 1.02 watts of power consumed by the data center, 1 watt is transferred to the equipment. According to a 2014 survey, data centers reported a PUE of 1.7 every year for four years.

BitFury currently has a data center in Gori, Georgia, and one in Iceland, with an energy efficiency rating of 1.05. Last week, it mined 16.6% of Bitcoin blocks, twice as much as its competitor KnCMiner.

Cooling Solution

As the price of Bitcoin drops and competition in mining becomes increasingly fierce, it is more important than ever for companies to reduce the cost of mining. On the one hand, electricity is usually the biggest expense, and on the other hand, there is the expense of cooling equipment.

“Immersion cooling is a very expensive, but perfect solution for the heat dissipation problem in bitcoin mining,”亚历克斯·卡姆普, vice president of engineering at Allied Control, told CoinDesk in an interview last April.

“Two-phase immersion cooling is a very promising technology, but currently it is most useful and needed for miners who need the advantages of flexible and fast deployment and need to utilize dense, high-powered hardware.”

Immerse the hardware in a liquid with a very low boiling point. Once heated, the liquid evaporates, taking the heat away, and then condenses into the pool. 3M claims it can reduce costs by 95%. As shown below:

However, liquid cooling is not the only option for Bitcoin mining companies seeking cooling solutions.

In September, KnCMiner opened an 18,000-square-foot facility in northern Sweden, using giant fans to pump in arctic air to keep temperatures low. KnCMiner is said to be using the cheapest electricity in Europe.

Some mining farms in China, such as HaoBTC, prefer to use ventilation fans and wet corrugated cardboard to solve the heat dissipation problem.

Original article: http://www.coindesk.com/bitfury-announces-record-immersion-cooling-project/
By Grace Caffyn
Translator: printemps
Editor: printemps
Source (translation): Babbitt Information