Stronghold Digital Mining deals with cryptocurrency mining, i.e. mining virtual coins using calculations. This process can carry large profits, but it requires huge computing power, and thus consumes huge amounts of electricity. Therefore, the company has two small power plants (80 and 85 MW) in Pennsylvania.
They feed power plants with waste to mine bitcoins. Now for the tires
The company’s power plants are powered by coal waste, i.e. a coal-containing mixture left after the extraction of raw material. This is already controversial, because on the one hand, the removal of coal waste allows for the reclamation of contaminated land, which, by the way, . On the other hand, it emits CO2 and harmful substances into the atmosphere. And in larger quantities than in the case of coal, because about twice as much coal waste is needed to produce a similar amount of electricity.
As , discussions about the harmfulness of burning coal waste fell into the background, because the company wants to support the efficiency of its power plants … by burning tires. Specifically, it is about powdered rubber from used tires, which, when added to coal waste, allows to increase the energy efficiency of combustion.
The company admits that it already sometimes has to support burning tires in its power plants. It also has permission to test use tires as fuel. However, it wants to obtain a permit for permanent use, so that tires account for 15% of the total. of the total fuel used, which will translate into burning 78 thousand. tons of old tires. “It’s terrible, I can’t believe people are allowed to smoke tires at all,” a local resident told The Guardian.
Tire burning is questionable. Controversial recommendation from the Environmental Protection Agency
As the British newspaper writes, in the past the US Environmental Protection Agency (archived ) recognized the use of used tires in the form of fuel as a “beneficial use”. As this article shows, it is better practice to recover energy from tires than to landfill them. However, environmentalists oppose such practices, because tires contain many highly toxic chemicals.
Charles McPhedran, a lawyer with the law firm Earthjustice, wants to prevent the company from obtaining a permit to burn tires permanently. In his opinion, such a method of “disposal” should be a last resort. And in this case, it’s about using tires to produce virtual currency, which will not benefit the local residents in any way.
Source: Gazeta
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