This is thermodynamics 101. I'm running our immersion program and have modeled the CFD of these systems more than once. I'm going to be general here and try to provide more of a road map for those who want to play with their own systems.

Define these parameters:
a) How much heat is being generated on a time basis.
b) Thermal conductivity of selected heat transfer fluid.
c) Specific gravity of dielectric
d) A, B, and C will tell you how fast your flow rate needs to be inside the unit to "refresh" the hot for cold fluid near the chips.

Once all that heat is being transferred to your exhaust system you need to back the math (heat load) into sizing a radiator. You can find these capacities on the units. Dry coolers work great if ambient temps are low enough to allow for sufficient transfer out of the fluid. You can extend your radiator run if you're committed to this route but it gets too damn hot outside to be efficient.


If you're transferring the heat to a water system (to then be transferred to ambient) then presumably you're utilizing a cooling tower system. Your water rate is the evaporation rate. Many, many online calculators for this. The latent heat of vaporization will tell you the remaining energy required to evaporate the heated water, the national weather stations will provide geo-local climate data (and calculators), and the two will define your water loss (refill rate). In many cases the systems provider will know exactly what their capacities and performance expectations are.

Unless you're rocking serious volumes don't bother looking into a condensation recapture system... it's freagin cost prohibitive.

You can consider a variety of hybrid methods. Dry coolers are pretty much always our first line. If summer spikes require greater capacity, we'll end up running a condenser as a second leg to finalize the cooling process after the driers have done all they can. This "subsystem" serves as a redundancy and overflow capacity. To be frank, though, the Texas summer heat can force it to assume a very large proportion of the cooling process during peak.

So. How much water will you lose?
8.33 BTU to raise 1 gal by 1 degree F
Roughly 8100 BTU to evaporate 1 gal. (starting temp)
1 watt = 3.41 btu

(it gets stupidly complicated to define your loss locally by hand. Be general with your RH and velocity variables).


I think an approach to desert miners would be a wet cooler. The heat transfer of vaporization is really about all you can do at those ambient levels before you're back to condensers. Otherwise, bury some geothermal pipe.

Hey folk.... long time lurker, first time poster.

Are there any community recommendations for insurance providers covering hosting facilities? I'm not aware of many places offering more than physical loss protection, and am struggling to find agents who deal in this space registered in Arkansas and Texas.

Thanks!