Excel Air Systems can assist in several parts of the blockchain rollout;

heat management, air filtration, and efficiency design.

 

Heat management

Whether you are mining Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, or various other cryptocurrencies, the tremendous processing and compute power required to secure the networks necessitates a plan for maintaining optimal temperatures, thereby ensuring your ASIC machines and/or GPU rigs aren’t going to overheat and cause major issues. The heat density of these miners can be on par with the world’s most extreme high-end server rooms.

When it comes to calculating capacities, we ask several key questions;

  • What type of ASIC or GPU miner is being used and how many?

  • What is the size of the space being utilized?

  • Where are you geographically located?

 

What type of ASIC or GPU miner is being used and how many?

Knowing the type of mining gear and its respective design constraints allows us to help you determine the amount of power being consumed, the BTU’s required to deal with that heat load, and the ideal running conditions. For example, the Bitmain Antminer S9 can run 10-20 °C higher than the Bitmain Antminer S17 without loss of performance. These factors can significantly impact decisions related to total capacity requirements, especially at scale. 

 

What is the size of the space being utilized?

Once we have the total load and running conditions, we look at the physical mining room location, as this dictates airflow design and potential limitations related to insulation values and air dispersion. We decide the best set-up and methodology – including hot or cold aisles, fan placements, and any additional mechanical cooling needs – based on the amount of space available within the room. The tighter the space, the more important it is to turn air over more frequently.

 

Where geographically are you located?

Understanding the varying outdoor ambient conditions that you will be facing during the course of the year allows us to devise several methods, such as air cooling/venting and mechanical cooling. We most frequently implement a hybrid of both passive and mechanical cooling techniques. This once again involves factoring in insulation capabilities, HVAC design capacities, and total load calculations.

 

Air Filtration

With the impressive number of computations occurring, a massive amount of heat is constantly being generated, 24 hours per day, 365 days per year, necessitating incredibly frequent air turns in and out of the chipsets. Since any rig will require cleaning maintenance over time, ensuring the air flowing through each machine is clean of any unwanted particles like dust and dander will significantly reduce downtime and increase performance. We accomplish this with varying degrees of air filtration.

To better understand your requirements we ask a few questions, including; 

  • Will you only be utilizing outdoor air to cool the miners?

  • Are you looking to expand your business in the near future?

  • Just how “clean” do you want to achieve?

Will you only be utilizing outdoor air to cool the miners?

As the most efficient way to maintain decent room temperature by far, utilizing outdoor air is the method is most widely used throughout most of the year, but several variables can lead to considerably more airborne issues, impacting an operation in ways that are detrimental to your operation.

During the wetter months, high humidity corrodes circuit boards and rusts metallic surfaces like fan grills and power supplies, causing serious malfunctions in just a short period of time. Then, during extremely hot periods, outdoor air provides less cooling capacity, leaving you with machines running beyond their intended temperature ranges, resulting in excess power usage and inefficient under-performance, reducing your equipment’s life expectancy. While utilizing outdoor air can indeed be quite efficient in many scenarios, the environment itself is still plagued with dust, insects, smoke, and other debris that, if left untreated, could render your miners useless.

In contrast, with sealed rooms using HVAC systems only, knowing the conditions you can potentially run into on a day-to-day basis allows for one or more stages of air filtration, which is calculated in relation to total CFM required, in turn based on total heat load and target operating efficiencies.

Are you looking to expand your business in the near future?

Most HVAC companies greatly oversize systems so as to not worry about a callback, but this is, and lazy. We want a better understanding of potential future expansion to know exactly how close to the edge we can go with our design, so that we can plan for the overage in the near term while still meeting todays needs and eliminating unnecessary waste. This could mean the difference of upsizing fans, duct sizes, and/or filter sizes to ensure targets are being hit as your facility expands.

Just how “clean” do you want to achieve?

With all the heat load calculations completed, we then consider the degree of cleanliness you’re looking to achieve in order to size filtration systems accordingly. There are three main buckets – basic minimum viability, enhanced hybrid solutions, and clean room grade, which is generally a completely sealed room using mostly or all mechanical cooling. Different variations of filtration can be selected specifically for the geographic region, such as dirty industrial areas, dusty desert locales, and everything in between. The level of filtration boils down to size, scale, and budget.

 

Efficiency Design

Efficiency in design can mean several different things, including;

  • power efficiency – utilizing consumed power in best hashrate per watt possible

  • production efficiency – calculating how easily maintenance can be achieved is in terms of labor as a major cost driver

  • mechanical selection – designing to maximum thresholds for gear, getting the most out of your equipment to eliminate wastage in resources and upfront costs. 

Power Efficiency

In today’s competitive world of MH/s, TH/s, and PH/s, per watt efficiencies are found everywhere – if you take the tine to look for them – and can be a significant revenue driver at large scale. Aside from allowing you to acquire and install the most advanced mining rigs, money can also buy power efficiency for the rest of your facility choices, especially when opting for extraction fans and total environmental control systems. While this usually means greater expenses upfront, the components are designed for maximum efficiency and integrated in a uniform manner, ensuring you get more with less. That’s where Excel Air Systems has a tremendous amount of experience.

Production Efficiency

While it’s generally one of the more underrated aspects, anyone who has led a team of people understands the importance of production efficiency for smooth workflow, which, if calculated in its entirety, can have a dramatic ROI. Therefore, when designing rooms, we take ease of information access into account – whether through providing knowledge upfront or positioning systems that can be accessed by anyone, as opposed to set-ups requiring lifts or large ladders. We always aim to put ourselves in your workers’ shoes and plan around any pain points – not just for everyday operation but also for the Plan B scenarios with larger, unforeseen situations.

Mechanical Selection

As mentioned, many HVAC companies take the approach of significantly oversizing all parts of a design to thwart callbacks and overpower any issues, but belief in this strategy’s effectiveness couldn’t be farther from the truth, especially from an efficiency standpoint. Equipment should be chosen for a reason and implemented to its full load. Redundancy, while is important, is better accomplished with multiple systems, rather than one massive oversized system leaves your facility grinded to a halt if an issue arises. Furthermore, putting in the work, doing the calculations, and understanding the real-world consequences grants you the benefit of better consistency, efficiency, and redundancy – it just takes proper planning.

 

Summing It Up

As we enter the Web3 era, with all of its new blockchain solutions, we want to make sure that the network’s foundational security is easily upheld by esteemed individuals like you. With that in mind, it’s important that you can confidently choose solutions that stand the test of time and partner with people who thoroughly understand the importance of your business within the industry. We have tremendous experience in mission-critical environmental control and would love the opportunity to help you realize your vision as an integral part of this vast new layer of society.

 

WANT in-depth information about Sealed room ENGINEERING?

Ready to set up a Crypto Mining Farm with Total Environmental Control?

 

We respect your privacy.
Please refer to our Privacy Policy for more information.