Revolutionizing Digital Mining: Bison Expands Expertise in Cutting-Edge Cooling Technologies
As the digital mining industry marches forward, we are proud to announce Bison has added a site operator to its team with knowledge and experience in air cooled, immersion, and hydro mining systems, including technology and requirements, facility design, automation, and infrastructure build-out.
The Three Types of Bitcoin Mining
Air Cooled
For years, Bitcoin mining has been done by ASIC computers with fans that are air cooled to reduce the ASICs (computers that mine Bitcoin and other digital assets) from overheating and being damaged. For this reason, Wyoming (and locations with similar latitudes) is an optimal climate for data centers and scaled digital mining facilities, as the outdoor climate is dry and cool, which affords considerably less energy and moderate infrastructure (fans, ventilation, etc.) to support “air cooling” the ASICs. For example, Bison’s North Range is air cooled, and you can see the air intake hoods on the site of the data centers and six exhaust fan locations on top of each data center.
Immersion
More recently, industry advancements have given rise to a newer practice called immersion cooling, where ASICs are submerged in tanks filled with a recirculating dielectric fluid to cool the ASICs more effectively. This allows the ASICs to process at a higher hash rate –or be “overclocked” – while reducing the risk of overheating and requiring less energy than traditional air cooled systems. However, immersion mining requires more infrastructure and other input costs than air cooled systems.
Hydro
The digital mining industry’s latest technology advancement has been to adopt a technique used in the industrial data center industry, where water and dielectric coolant are used in a closed-loop system within the hardware (computer, server, ASIC). The water/fluid cools the metal components as it flows through the unit, in effect, keeping the machines cooler and able to process a higher hash rate (i.e., run more efficiently).
Hydro systems are primarily used in industrial applications, requiring large volumes of flowing or storable water, large amounts of dielectric fluids, and other related large-scale mechanical equipment and infrastructure to support and operate the ASICs specially designed for this application. Such ASICs are commonly referred to as “Hydro miners,” an example of which is the Antminer S19 XP Hyd (255Th).
Bison’s team is on the leading edge of mining infrastructure and automation technologies. We look forward to sharing exciting news as the Campstool site advances.