Immersion mining with canola oil to concentrate maple sap more quickly
I'm using a single S9 hash board immersed in canola oil to heat maple sap to increase the effectiveness of the reverse osmosis sap concentration system.
The weather conditions this season have caused the maple sap to be cold and stay cold which drastically slows down the ability of the RO system to filter water out of it. I ran into a bottle neck where there is more sap than I can keep up with concentrating so I needed to come up with something quickly!
Ideally if the temperature of the sap is 77°f the filter will operate most effectively without damaging the RO membrane. Of course, my mind immediately turned to Bitcoin mining for the heating solution. What I came up with was an immersion system using the homebrew equipment I already had to heat the sap just before it entered the RO. This would allow the majority of the sap to stay cool keeping it from spoiling and still remove the most water possible.
The only thing I didn't have for the immersion system was the dielectric fluid. I had no idea where to find the proper fluid nor did it make sense to pay the high cost for it. The application for this system is very specific and I will only need it until April. I had been joking about using canola oil as dielectric fluid for almost a year but for this situation it seemed like the perfect fit. Canola oil is 70% cheaper than bitcool before shipping and was immediately available!
Amazingly, I put everything together and it worked very well without major adjustments. I tip-toed the voltage and frequency of the single S9 hashboard up slowly to find the right balance in temperatures between the two fluid loops. Ultimately, I ended up with an overclocked board drawing over 600w! By the time I got the system setup and dialed in I was already half way through concentrating this collection of sap. The next collection will offer more concrete data on what this system is capable of. For now, even with the worst S9 board I have, I'm getting a 15% rebate on the total power usage of the whole process and it's definitely concentrating sap more quickly. All for ~$10 of canola oil... đź‘€
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This is brilliant. In Nigeria we have palm oil everywhere, literally cheaper than canola. I wonder if palm oil would work for immersion? It has higher smoke point. Has anyone tried it? Might be a way to recycle used palm oil from kitchens to cool miners and then... heat water. Two birds.
i guess you could dunk a hair dryer or something into a bucket of palm oil and see if it shorts or not. another idea would be to ask a clanker.
I asked a clanker and it said that palm oil works but canola oil is better. Since the miners are operating at such low voltages (I keep the PSU out of the oil) sounds like palm oil should work.
Used oil might be broken down to the point of losing the dielectric properties. Definitely look into that.
Thanks for checking, @revhodl21! Really appreciate you and the clanker both confirming it should work.
‎You are right about used oil losing dielectric strength — in Nigeria we fry with palm oil many times, so used oil would have water + food particles in it. That would be risky.
‎But what about "fresh unrefined palm oil"? It's super cheap here, even cheaper than canola in Aba market, and it stays stable. I think it could be a good test for a low-budget miner box here where we can't import mineral oil.
‎If I get a small miner to test in Port Harcourt heat, I'll post results here. Thanks for the inspiration with your maple syrup idea — two birds indeed!
I'm curious the % of water the RO is able to remove.
If the miner only recoups 15% of the energy cost of warming it and running it through the filter, then does this still beat just using an evaporator for the whole process.
Have you considered integrating the evaporation into this loop, so the sap retains some of the heat?
I'm able to remove about 70 percent of the water before I start to boil.
The post here is the first version of the system, so I was using my least valuable/efficient equipment if things broke. Now I'm using my most efficient equipment which offers a much better rebate.
I push 160 taps through an 8gal kettle with propane, very cheap setup but a grueling process to keep up with the sap flow. The Bitcoin mining sap heater allowed me to double my production without having to upgrade any of my equipment.
RO uses much less energy than boiling but the filter is expensive and if a mistake is made and the filter is fouled then it could erase all the savings.
It's a clever workaround. And grueling is the right word for it. Cooking down sap is no joke, I know that from experience. If it is as efficient as you say, I'm guessing it might make sense for someone to figure out how to scale it.
gotta find a maple sugaring Bitcoiner with a shitload of maple taps to prove it works at scale.
Wow, you're a genius—you killed two birds with one stone. I like the system you came up with, and I also like the BTC stickers visible in the photos.
I love these videos of your "rigs".
Have you found an application for bitcoin miners that you think is clearly going to be a way they're commonly used in the future: i.e. something where the conventional way will be totally displaced by a process using miners?
I think some sort of water heating or dehydration will be the most common application to start. I'm not sure what the most "valuable" application of the heat will turn out to be. Laundromat might be a cool thing to try. I know of a guy that uses miners to heat water at his car wash. There is the hot tub company Snorkel that also uses miners to heat the water.
I hadn't heard of Snorkel. Hot tubs always seemed like a great application to me, because they don't need as high of temperatures as a lot of other applications and water has such amazing heat capacity.
Have you noticed if the oil degrades with heat? How do you know when to change it?
yes, the bigger the temperature swings and the more exposure to oxygen, the faster the oil degrades. I've found it lasts about 8 months with poor management. I save spent oil and use it as lubricant around the homestead. This winter, I'm going to experiment with making sawdust logs with the spent oil to burn in the rocket mass heater so at least I can get a little extra heat for the house out of it.
I can verify that this is TASTY syrup!!!
It tastes so much better knowing how integrated with Bitcoin it is.
You've got the coolest projects! Thanks for the video, I'm loving watching.
I'll keep sharing as things come up. This community asks great questions which lead to more opportunities to share what I've done.
Canola is clever because it's non-conductive and cheap. But how often do you have to change it? I heard vegetable oil goes rancid after a few months at 70C+ and gets gunky. Mineral oil lasts longer but costs 3x. What was your experience?
This is true. The Canola oil lasts about 8 months when poorly managed. It's a lot more fragile than the expensive harder to find options like bitcool. Mineral oil is damaging to the hardware so there's another tradeoff in addition to the higher cost vs canola oil. I'm currently experimenting with a canola oil; mineral oil blend.
I use the spent canola oil for lubricant on chainsaws and gearboxes of farm equipment. I'm going to experiment with sawdust/oil logs to heat the house as well this winter. Basically, I'm getting value out of the oil even though I've had to do a couple oil changes on the hot water heater.
With the maple sap heater, the oil should last several seasons, when well cared for, which is similar to what you would expect from the RO filters too.
Canola oil is a great way to play around and learn about immersion systems with low up front costs. My plan is to do a larger central boiler system which would use the more expensive and long lasting fluids. I'm confident with what I've learned from using the canola oil that I'll be successful with the larger scale system.
crafty very neat!
holy peak
That's an original setup. I love to work in the open too and connect with the surrounding sounds, smells, etc. What will you do with all that mapple, siroup?
By the way, consider sharing your alchemical culinary experiments in ~food_and_drinks. Look forward to knowing more about the final product.
We produce enough syrup to use it as our sugar at the homestead and we sell the extra at Bitcoin meetups across the region. I very rarely ship things, I try to find enough demand locally.
You could not do better than that. Sustainable production and local circular economy build. Admirable.
Thats why permaculture is so great. I owe it all to living a permaculture life.
Bitcoin mining and maple syrup is a combo never expected :))
Love the improvised dielectric choice. Canola oil’s viscosity and smoke point make it a reasonable short-season substitute for proper immersion fluid when you’re only running through April — and “~$10 + scrap S9 board” is an absurdly good CAPEX story for a sap bottleneck.
Two practical notes if you publish a follow-up with the next collection’s numbers:
15% power rebate while unblocking RO throughput is the kind of “hashrate as industrial heat” demo that actually travels. Looking forward to the harder data next collection.
Really clever setup. Using the S9’s heat to help with the sap concentration makes good use of the energy that would otherwise be wasted.
Love seeing creative minds come up with ideas like this