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US-20260129798-A1 - Method Of Subsidizing Cost Of Providing Information

US20260129798A1US 20260129798 A1US20260129798 A1US 20260129798A1US-20260129798-A1

Abstract

The inventive subject matter provides for efficiently cooling computer systems. Thermal energy from a cooling system containing a computer system and at least one manifold that is operably coupled with a compressor, heat exchanger, pressure regulator, and controller, to provide thermal energy at an elevated temperature to drive the commercial process. The cooling system can advantageously be used to cool computer systems, including Bitcoin miners, crypto miners, high-performance computers, AI computers, or other thermal energy producing devices. The system operates by extracting vapor of the working fluid from the at least one manifold, increasing the pressure and temperature of the extracted vapor by compression, and then passing this vapor to a heat exchanger, thereby providing thermal energy to cooling distribution unit at a temperature that can be higher than the operating temperature of the computer system.

Inventors

  • Carl Meinhart

Assignees

  • Carl Meinhart

Dates

Publication Date
20260507
Application Date
20251205

Claims (8)

  1. 1 . A method for efficiently cooling computer systems, comprising: providing a cooling system comprising at least one manifold, wherein at least one manifold is in thermal communication with a computer system, wherein an elevated-low-pressure liquid-phase of a working fluid flows through the manifold, and wherein the computer system providing the information; directing the elevated-low-pressure vapor-phase of the working fluid from the at least one manifold to a compressor; compressing the elevated-low-pressure vapor-phase of the working fluid to produce an elevated-high-pressure vapor-phase of the working fluid, wherein the temperature of the working fluid is increased during the compressing process; utilizing the elevated-high-pressure vapor-phase of the working fluid in a heat exchanger to provide thermal energy to a cooling distribution unit, during which the elevated-high-pressure vapor-phase of the working fluid is condensed to an elevated-high-pressure liquid-phase of the working fluid; reducing a pressure of the elevated-high-pressure liquid-phase of the working fluid to produce an elevated-low-pressure liquid-phase of the working fluid; returning the elevated-low-pressure liquid-phase of the working fluid to the at least one manifold; and monitoring and controlling among at least one of the computer system, the compressor, the pressure regulator, such that the temperature of the thermal energy supplied to the cooling distribution unit is higher than the operating temperature of the computer system.
  2. 2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the working fluid comprises a mixture of at least two different working fluids, wherein each component of the mixture has at least two different saturation temperatures within the manifold.
  3. 3 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the working fluid has a saturation temperature in the manifold-cooling system of 50° C. to 80° C., inclusive.
  4. 4 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the cooling system further comprises at least two manifolds that are in thermal communication with the computer system.
  5. 5 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the information comprises a Bitcoin hash.
  6. 6 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the information comprises an artificial intelligence (AI) computation.
  7. 7 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising monitoring and controlling at least three of the computer system, the manifold, the compressor, the pressure regulator, and the commercial process.
  8. 8 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising using feedback to control a rate of electrical energy usage by the computer system as a function of electrical energy cost and/or computational incentives.

Description

PRIORITY CLAIM This application is Continuation-In-Part (CIP) application of PCT/US25/22806 filed Apr. 2, 2025, which is a Continuation-In-Part (CIP) of U.S. utility patent application Ser. No. 18/983,028 filed Dec. 16, 2024, which is a Continuation-In-Part (CIP) application of U.S. utility patent application Ser. No. 18/780,850 filed Jul. 23, 2024, which is a Continuation-In-Part (CIP) application of U.S. utility patent application Ser. No. 18/628,636 filed Apr. 5, 2024, all of which are incorporated herein by reference and to which this application claims benefit of priority. Where a definition or use of a term in a reference that is incorporated by reference is inconsistent or contrary to the definition of that term provided herein, the definition or use of that term provided herein is deemed to be controlling. FIELD OF THE INVENTION The field of invention is high-performance computer systems, including for example Bitcoin mining and artificial intelligence computing. BACKGROUND The following description includes information that can be useful in understanding the present invention. It is not an admission that any of the information provided herein is prior art or relevant to the presently claimed invention, or that any publication specifically or implicitly referenced is prior art. Prior art two-phase immersion-cooling computer systems require CPUs/Miners to be immersed in a dielectric working fluid. The dielectric fluid undergoes a phase change from a saturated liquid to a saturated vapor. The saturated vapor is condensed back into the liquid by removing thermal energy, such that the liquid can be reused in the cooling process. However, this process of removing thermal energy requires additional energy to drive pumps and/or cooling fans. In addition, rejecting this thermal energy to the surrounding environment can require that the surrounding environment be at a lower temperature than the dielectric working fluid. The standard practice in the high-performance computing industry is to reject the thermal energy from the working fluid by extracting thermal energy (i.e. internal energy or enthalpy). In contrast to standard practice in the high-performance computing industry, in the inventive subject matter, energy can be added to the working fluid vapor by compressing the vapor, before the thermal energy is extracted. Thermal energy generated from computer systems can be at a relatively low temperature of 40° C. to 80° C., 20° C. to 60° C., or even 40° C. to 50° C. which means that according to the second law of thermodynamics, removing the generated thermal energy is not very efficient for producing useful mechanical work. For example, assuming a waste thermal energy temperature of Th=60° C. (333K), and a heat sink ambient temperature of Tc=20° C. (293K), a Carnot heat engine (ideal heat engine) has a maximum theoretical efficiency of ηHE=1−Tc/Th=1−293/333=0.12 (as discussed by Cengel, Y. A., Boles, M. A. Thermodynamics: An Engineering Approach, 8th Ed. McGraw Hill, incorporated herein by reference). This means that a heat engine could at best convert 12% of the waste thermal energy into mechanical work and the remaining 88% would need to be rejected by a different mechanism such as heat transfer. This low efficiency renders impractical the use of a heat engine to extract enthalpy from the resulting thermal energy for mechanical work. In the of field high-performance computing, such as Artificial Intelligence computing, crypto mining, Bitcoin mining, or other computing environments, computer systems take in electrical energy and information, perform computations using that information, and then output information relating to those computations. This process converts the electrical energy into thermal energy. This thermal energy must then be rejected to the surrounding environment. High-performance computing (including Artificial Intelligence computing) can utilize large immersion-cooling systems to remove the resulting thermal energy from the CPUs. The resulting thermal energy may be at too low of a temperature to be efficiently used for other purposes. In some cases, the application or transfer of thermal energy is used in the production of a product or service. The inability to repurpose the resulting thermal energy in an efficient manner to drive additional commercial processes is a longstanding problem in the high-performance computing industry. This problem is particularly important for Bitcoin mining, which utilizes very significant amounts of electrical energy. Most of the resulting thermal energy is rejected to the surrounding environment, and currently there are few practical ways to utilize the rejected thermal energy to offset the energy cost. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The inventive subject matter provides apparatus, systems, and methods in which costs of using computer systems to provide information can be subsidized by repurposing otherwise wasted thermal energy to drive at least one commercia