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Wow. Now this is cool stuff. We're getting closer and closer to the end of "Back to the Future", where garbage will just become fuel.
A study in the online journal of the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, reports that waste coffee grounds can provide a cheap, abundant, and environmentally friendly source of biodiesel fuel for powering cars and trucks. The study by Mano Misra, Susanta Mohapatra, and Narasimharao Kondamudi note that the major barrier to wider use of biodiesel fuel is lack of a low-cost, high quality source, or feedstock, for producing that new energy source. Spent coffee grounds contain between 11 and 20 percent oil by weight which is almost as much as traditional biodiesel feedstocks such as rapeseed, palm, and soybean oil.
According to the article, growers produce more than 16 billion pounds of coffee around the world each year and the spent ground often wind up in the trash or find use as soil conditioner. The scientists estimated, however, that spent coffee grounds can potentially add 340 million gallons of biodiesel to the world’s fuel supply.
To verify it, the scientists collected spent coffee grounds from a multinational coffeehouse chain and separated the oil. They then used an inexpensive process to convert 100 percent of the oil into biodiesel.
The resulting coffee-based fuel — which actually smells like java — had a major advantage in being more stable than traditional biodiesel due to coffee’s high antioxidant content, the researchers say. Solids left over from the conversion can be converted to ethanol or used as compost, the report notes. The scientists estimate that the process could make a profit of more than $8 million a year in the U.S. alone. They plan to develop a small pilot plant to produce and test the experimental fuel within the next six to eight months.
Posted on this the other day -> http://www.biodieselnow.com/forums/t/23579.aspx
"'To be neutral and to be passive is to collaborate with whatever is going on.' Democracy is not just a counting-up of votes, but a counting-up of actions.'" ~Howard Zinn
Don't know about using coffee grounds as fuel, but it is silly for anone to throw used coffe grounds in the trash. For me they go into the compost pile. Otherwise just throw them in flower pots, beds, or on your yard as coffee grounds are a great organic fertilizer.
Dereck
Oops. Sorry, Erik. Must'a missed it. My bad.
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