In November 2023 #Alex de Vries & the #BBC claimed - "In total, #bitcoin consumed ...

npub1l79…sqkt

2024-10-20 14:51:13

In November 2023 #Alex de Vries & the #BBC claimed -

"In total, #bitcoin consumed nearly 1,600 billion litres - also known as gigalitres (GL) - of water in 2021"
"Every Bitcoin payment uses a swimming pool of water"

This seemed a little excessive, because in my own experience of home mining I do not use ANY #water what so ever !?

What do they mean by use ?
evaporation ?
cooling circuit ?
So I decided to calculate both.

Thought experiment -

   If we took the most extreme power estimate to see how much water we could boil. This would give the absolute maximum amount of water that could be lost via evaporation.
   Basics science tells us we need 2256kJoules or 1.596kWh to evaporate 1 litre or 1kg of water. In 2021 Bitcoin power consumption was around 50- 400 TWh/year depending on the estimate ( My calculations show 56TWh ), we will take the worst case scenario -

100% water cooling via evaporation

TWh400

Litres water = Power / Latent heat of vaporization
          = 400,000,000,000 kWh / 1.596 kWh
            = 250,000,000,000 Litres or 100,000 Swimming pools
   not 1,600,000,000,000 Litres or 640,000 Swimming pools

In reality only roughly only 21% of ASIC's are or were water cooled, of that 21% and an estimated 50% dissipate heat via evaporation. Everything else is air cooled. The coolant loop, like your car may have it's water changed once a year. We will assume 2 Litres of water per ASIC for the cooling loop & roughly 1.96million ASIC's.

https://www.bitcoinpowerconsumption.info/water-use.html

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Published at

2024-10-20 14:51:13

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