That video link is amazing - here's another one.
The fact that it circulates itself with the boiling and condensing back into the pool is awesome. Just need some way to get the heat out of the tank. One of them uses a water circulated external cooler to cool the area inside the sealed tank. Some of the review videos look more like an open tank setup with condensation bars which are removable - probably more manageable than the sealed off tank. Not sure how much 'pressure' there is or if it's more of an atmospheric chamber of low pressure. Very fascinating.
The fact that it circulates itself with the boiling and condensing back into the pool is awesome. Just need some way to get the heat out of the tank. One of them uses a water circulated external cooler to cool the area inside the sealed tank. Some of the review videos look more like an open tank setup with condensation bars which are removable - probably more manageable than the sealed off tank. Not sure how much 'pressure' there is or if it's more of an atmospheric chamber of low pressure. Very fascinating.
I suppose you could add heat sinks or such to the walls/ceiling of the tank. Problem with not sealing it is you would lose much of it and Novec is not exactly cheap...
Using a regular water cooling method to remove heat from the top (inside?) of the tank also sounds interesting, sealing everything afterwards is tricky, you need to seal the holes for wires and the water cooling tubing for the tank. I guess that's the most efficient method.
You are right about pressure, would be interesting to check it once the thing is closed and cycling. Possibly lowering the pressure a bit is needed to keep things balanced. So add another tube to pump some air out and some pressure meter
If the ceiling is metal (aluminum, copper or silver
), with a (water) heatsink, maybe you don't even need the water cooling to get inside the tank at all... I'd do the whole thing in copper (or at least the ceiling upper walls) with maybe a little window to inspect Novec liquid level.Also tank size ratio probably affects efficiency. Smaller tanks for individual miners, a few miners per tank? There is probably an efficiency ratio in there.