Mining Bitcoin With Used Cooking Oil

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How to mine #Bitcoin with used cooking oil? Eliazar @JUN_AJPU_btc from the @LakeBitcoin project in Panajachel, Guatemala gave me a small workshop about #Kaboom mining. Here's what I learned and here's how you can replicate the set-up. 🧵 👇

1/18 Kaboom Energy is a proof of concept project in the town of Panajachel, Guatemala on the shore of Lake Atitlán. Efforts reducing pollution around the lake have not been successful. Waste, such as used cooking oil, end up in rivers, streams and the lake.

2/18 Eliazar goes to local restaurants and asks them for used cooking oil. Of course, restaurants are happy to give it to him. This way, they don't need to stress out about how to dispose of it.

3/18 The oil is often full of particles, so first it needs to be cleaned up. Heating up the oil in a kettle will help. Heat will also remove water from the oil.

4/18 Next, Eliazar pours the oil through a t-shirt. The shirt acts a filter to catch the particles.

5/18 You can also use a centrifuge to clean the oil. This is more efficient if you want to clean a larger amount of oil.

6/18 Once the oil is clean, it can be fed into the engine. Kaboom uses a diesel engine that's estimated to be almost 40 years old. The cleaner the oil, the better the engine will run. If the oil is not clean, the engine will sneeze and cough.

7/18 5 gallons of oil (about 19 litres) can burn for around 15 hours. The engine is loud, so before installing this set-up in your shed/garage, consider the social effects the decision might have e.g. on your marriage.

8/18 Once the engine starts to produce electricity, it's channeled into a car battery.

9/18 Diesel engines were originally developed to run on vegetable oils. In fact, vegetable oil burns cleaner than petrol. Seed oils are food for machines, not for humans! But for some reason, somebody out there wants you to keep on buying petrol and eating seed oils. 😕

10/18 Kaboom has 2 ASIC miners: one S9 and one S17 miner. The miners are around 10 years old and at the end of their journey.

11/18 Kaboom is a small operation, but to scale it up, a remote location away from residential and commercial areas (e.g. near a landfill) would be ideal. Kaboom is located on the premises of a welder, and the rent for the site is about 30 USD/month (+ the internet 30 USD).

12/18 In fact, all equipment Kaboom uses is recycled material and someone else's garbage. Waste is matter, matter is energy, and energy is Bitcoin and digital gold. Eliazar is a modern-day alchemist!

13/18 Kaboom provides hashrate to @LincoinMining pool, and the mining process can be monitored in real time with a phone app. The profits from the mining revenue will be used to benefit the @LakeBitcoin project.

14/18 Kaboom is not on all the time, but if it was, it would earn about 1 USD in 24 hours. Granted, the engine has CO2 emissions, but the alternative would be that the oil would have to travel for 3 hours to Guatemala City, and we can't be sure what happens to it once there.

15/18 Incentives align in Kaboom: ✅ Restaurants don't have to worry about disposing of waste ✅ It would be easy to just throw the oil away → environment wins ✅ Eliazar gets to mine BTC It's a win-win-win situation for businesses, individuals and the environment.

16/18 In case you were wondering where the name "Kaboom" comes from... It was difficult at first to find a site for the project, and when a place was finally found, someone impulsively shouted in excitement: "Ka-boom!"

17/18 If you want to learn more about Kaboom, here is the project's white paper: twitter.com/LakeBitcoin/status/1585756380304404480

18/18 Finally, some accounts to follow who are or have been in some ways involved in the Kaboom/Lake Bitcoin project in Guatemala: @LakeBitcoin @JUN_AJPU_btc @ShewchukJim @rjgallardoe @BillWhittaker11 @mrcdbrown3 @ReynaChicas2 @Rez_N8_