Photo: Allied Control Ltd.
Cryptocurrency mining is a costly process requiring huge amounts of energy, processing power and advanced cooling systems to keep the equipment running. With the growing competition, miners are undertaking all approaches possible in order to achieve maximum efficiency and remain profitable. Some have placed their mining farms in Siberia, while others have buried their equipment beneath the Eurasian steppe.
Bitfury has upgraded the cooling system at its 40-megawatt mining plant located in Tbilisi, Georgia, Bloomberg reported. The company has submerged its computers directly in a non-conducive liquid, thus lowering costs of operations.
Bitfury’s Immersion Cooling Technology
Based in China, Bitfury is one of the leading blockchain infrastructure providers using the world’s largest immersion cooling system at its Tbilisi facility. According to the company, they previously sold the plant to a Hong Kong-listed fintech company, but later repurchased it at a discount.
When Bloomberg attended Bitfury’s facility in Georgia this summer, it saw about 160 cooling tanks with big amounts of highly-engineered fluid. The plant was surrounded by smaller facilities overviewing the Caucasus Mountains.
The company is using the most powerful two-phase immersion cooling (2PIC) technology from the Hong Kong-based engineering company Allied Control with a Novec liquid from 3M Co., which is a leader in immersion cooling. In a 2PIC system, equipment is immersed in a bath of dielectric heat transfer liquid that is better heat conductor than water or oil. Moreover, unlike oil cooling, these liquids are non-flammable and eco-friendly.
As per 3M, Novec, which has been used in race car fires and to pump water from the desert, is able to reduce cooling costs by 95%. Bitfury CEO, Valery Vavilov, says the technology can significantly reduce energy consumption and the amount of space at the data center necessary for mining.
Bitfury expects the technology will also draw interest from urban cloud computing providers. Vavilov noted that mining remain a lucrative activity and the company is excited about the future of bitcoin.
“We realized early on that high-powered data centers would be used for everything from internet searches to securing the Bitcoin blockchain,” Vavilov told Bloomberg. “Our mining operations are still profitable and we are bullish on Bitcoin in the long-term.”
Georgia as a Crypto Mining Center
The Republic of Georgia, located in the region of Eurasia, has turned into the world’s second largest cryptocurrency mining region after China, owing to a number of factors like low-cost land, inexpensive energy costs, and government tax incentives. Thanks to Bitfury, the country has emerged as a regional leader in cryptocurrencies and innovative technologies.
The company has also become part of the country’s politics and managed to secure several blockchain agreements, such as facilitating Ukraine’s government to run elections there.
Remi Urumashvili, who is now Bitfury’s representative in Georgia, said he played an important role in providing zero taxes for the company when Vavilov came to the country five years ago. Two weeks later, Bitfury announced plans to launch a data center.
Georgia will soon get more exposure as it is going to host Bitmain’s digital mining summit later this month.
