We'd love board feedback on our concept: Combined Heating and Computation

[notbatman]

"Demonic device converts information to energy";  http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101114/full/news.2010.606.html

"information is being converted to energy", says Sano.

"This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content," says Christopher Jarzynski.

[BADecker]

There are actually refrigerators that use thermocouple action in reverse.

A thermocouple has 2 dissimilar metals welded or otherwise attached together. When heat is applied at the joint, and is convected down the metals, a current is generated in the metals. If the metals are wires attached at the ends, and only one of the ends is heated, the current flows in a circuit around the wire loop.

What is interesting is, if you induce and electric current in the wires rather than heating one of the joints, as the current flows (must be DC), heat is transferred from one of the dissimilar metal joints to the other. Refrigerators have been made that use this process, though the last thing I heard years ago was that they aren't very efficient.

Next step. Transfer an Internet signal from one computer to another, in a way that actually allows a reverse transfer of heat from the other computer to the first one.

[adesanctis]

Our concept essentially turns the cpu / gpu components into resistance heaters.

[BADecker]

Our concept essentially turns the cpu / gpu components into resistance heaters.

What you are conceptualizing is something like this kind of a heater:

When you folks in the cold country heat your house, you run some kind of fuel through a furnace, to burn it and produce heat. Think about a fuel oil fired furnace. Now, think about this. The fuel oil doesn't care at all how it is burned. As long as it is burned fairly cleanly, it will produce the desired heat.

Get yourself a little, 3 cylinder, Kabota diesel engine. Run the engine off the fuel oil. The fuel oil doesn't care. When the exhaust comes out of the engine exhaust pipe, run it through a heat exchanger, and heat your house.

At the same time, run a generator with the engine, and use the electricity to produce electric heat. Literally cut your heating bill in half.

If you are going to run a computer so hot that you have enough heat to heat your house, why waste the heat? Do what these guys are suggesting, mine bitcoins through a mining pool, and heat your house at the same time.

[adesanctis]

Yea you are getting it -

Honestly, think of it this way: your auto engine works on the same principles (minus the distributed networking). It burns fuel in order to provide propulsion, but the heat and the kinetic energy of the motor is captured to heat the occupants in the summer, cool them in the winter, and run all of the electronics housed in the vehicle. That's why we call the concept Exergy.

"In thermodynamics, the exergy of a system is the maximum useful work possible during a process that brings the system into equilibrium with a heat reservoir. When the surroundings are the reservoir, exergy is the potential of a system to cause a change as it achieves equilibrium with its environment. Exergy is the energy that is available to be used."

[nakazznicek]

Can you draw me something to explain me how this should work? So far i have no idea how this should work...

[adesanctis]

------>Electricity----->Computer components-------->Computation
                                                              {--------->Waste heat--->heat exchanger attached to computer components--->usable waste heat

That honestly might be the worst graphical on Earth but I still haven't figured out how to upload images. Is that at all helpful?

[ltorsini]

I don't get it. Why would anybody in their right mind want to heat a building using the waste heat from electrical devices when it's far more energy efficient to just use a heat pump?

We're actually not heating the building with waste heat, the second prototype unit is being designed to be the primary heat and eventually cooling for the building, the computation is just a beneficial byproduct of creating heat for those existing loads.

When you think about processors and where all the energy goes in running one, it's all heat.  An infinitesimally small amount of energy is consumed in the actual processing, likely couldn't measure it is you wanted to, and the main output of computing is heat.  If 99.99999% of the energy that is consumed by a processor is converted to heat then it is pretty efficient at making heat out of electricity, at least as good as the existing resistance heating technology today.

The big difference is the beneficial byproduct - computation.  We are using computation to offset energy consumption that already exists (people already pay to heat their house and water) with a heating system that makes hot water and air with computation.  That means you are getting one or the other for free, computation or heat.  If you are actually making money off of the computation (by mining coins?) then you could, in theory, be making money while heating your house or hot water.  I dont think you can do that with a heat pump... yet.

We are already hitting temperatures with the 1st prototype that allow us to create cold with heat as well so we will soon be making heat, cold (for AC or refrigeration) and computation all from the very same energy we are just using for computation today.

Its pretty cool, or hot depending on how you look at it.

 

Check out the 1st prototype at the link to the website below ->

[b!z]

0/10 bad idea

[adesanctis]

Thanks for the feedback Biz!

[b!z]

No worries, good luck adesanctis!

[adesanctis]

Thanks yo!

[BADecker]

Yea you are getting it -

Honestly, think of it this way: your auto engine works on the same principles (minus the distributed networking). It burns fuel in order to provide propulsion, but the heat and the kinetic energy of the motor is captured to heat the occupants in the summer, cool them in the winter, and run all of the electronics housed in the vehicle. That's why we call the concept Exergy.

"In thermodynamics, the exergy of a system is the maximum useful work possible during a process that brings the system into equilibrium with a heat reservoir. When the surroundings are the reservoir, exergy is the potential of a system to cause a change as it achieves equilibrium with its environment. Exergy is the energy that is available to be used."

Back when I used to tinker, I thought about making a car engine that would run really hot. The cooling jacket of the engine would actually be a boiler, that would take the heat from the engine, and run a second, STEAM, engine. All the heat would be captured, even from the exhaust, and converted into boiling water to run a second engine. The heat would be used twice. The steam engine might put out almost as much mechanical force as the main, gasoline engine.

I never did this, as I was only a tinkerer. But think of using a small gasoline or diesel engine as the main engine. If you had good insulation, and if the engines could be built to withstand the heat, you actually might be able to run 10 engines (or any number) off the same heat until too much of the heat dissipated through the insulation.

Exergy is the start of something like this in the computing industry.

[adesanctis]

The principle applies theory to a ton of applications and it's extraordinary that we don't employ it more often.

You guys like beer? Me too. These guys are doing it with their operations.

Check it:

http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2014_07_23_combined_heat_and_brewing_power


And for review...

www.3xergy.com

Keep em coming guys!