Heat repurposing

[the_cia_yes_the_real_one]

I have read at multiple places that many industrial/serious miners have dual use sites wherein the heat generated is used to heat apartments, and even whole cities sometimes. How does this work?
Do they use some kind of heat duct to transfer the hot air using exhaust fans from the data-centers? I understand as soon as that heat faces the outside world, it would cool down rapidly and the heat would get dissipated. Are they converting that heat to some kind of stored energy? How does heat repurposing work?

[Ambatman]

Some do save it temporary as thermal energy for future use but in most cases insulated pipes are used to transport the heat across the building or districts
And quite sometime to reach a longer distance it can be used on water which are made to travel through pipes
This would reduce to heat loss lower than normal.

You can check out this site to see innovative ways to use Heat generated through Bitcoin mining

These are creative ways to repurpose heat from bitcoin mining.

[the_cia_yes_the_real_one]

Some do save it temporary as thermal energy for future use

Thank you for the answer.
How is the above done? How is such heat saved for future use?



Also using it for heating buildings and districts, I understand that this is as far as they can go, so the areas that can be heated have to be quite close to the mining infrastructure. Am I right?

[FP91G]

I have read at multiple places that many industrial/serious miners have dual use sites wherein the heat generated is used to heat apartments, and even whole cities sometimes. How does this work?
Do they use some kind of heat duct to transfer the hot air using exhaust fans from the data-centers? I understand as soon as that heat faces the outside world, it would cool down rapidly and the heat would get dissipated. Are they converting that heat to some kind of stored energy? How does heat repurposing work?

The easiest way I have seen in a residential home is through liquid cooling and a radiator or heat exchanger. Noise is very important in a residential home, so liquid cooling solves the noise problem.

[Findingnemo]

Also using it for heating buildings and districts, I understand that this is as far as they can go, so the areas that can be heated have to be quite close to the mining infrastructure. Am I right?

Heat produced from the miners are not that high, it's almost at the average of 50°C only which means it can be only used for limited purposes, so far the biggest use case is, it's been used to heat over 7000 apartments which saves a lot of electricity so helps in reducing the carbon emission into the environment which is what he meant that it can save us in future (I assume). Another use case is it's been used in maintaining the temperature on greenhouse farming.

[the_cia_yes_the_real_one]

"Heat over 7000 apartments".. How? How far do these apartments have to be?
How is the heat transferred from the mining room to these 7000 apartments without heat dissipation? It's not like it is hot boiling water steam. Someone needs to show a video of this setup of a heat exhaust directly being linked to a building. If it is so cold, then by the time the heat reaches the apartment it would already be cold.

[Mia Chloe]

I know the concept of trying to minimise wasted energy especially thermal energy during cold seasons like winter is a nice concept but it seems everyone here is actually ignoring the costs. Channelling that heat energy efficiently would be one of the most difficult aspects especially because of the costs attached by the installation of the whole setup.

Also not to mention that based on Thermodynamics heat transfer isn't very efficient because of losses you find out that even with the insulated pipe setup you may not get up to 80% of the heat expelled as usable energy. Most electronic devices use heat sinks so you may have to do some mod to make it convectional heat transfer than conductive heat transfer.

[wwzsocki]

 
... so far the biggest use case is, it's been used to heat over 7000 apartments ...  

 
Interesting topic we also discuss it lately in our local board.

It’s challenging to find precise data on using heat from miners to heat apartments on such a large scale.
I tried to use google to find some info about these 7K apartments but couldn't, at least I haven't found any info how this is done, what equipment they use, only some info that indeed there is some mining service that is using the heat for that purpose, so if you have some links be so kind to share please

locally I saw something like this, some miner heat his home using mining rigs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=burASnlgtkE

There are also such commercial devices like Heatbit
"Heatbit is a commercial product that works like an electric heater, and at the same time mines Bitcoin. It generates heat during mining and is optimized for home use." https://www.heatbit.com