Diesel, Made Simply From Coffee Grounds (Ah, the Exhaust Aroma)

By HENRY FOUNTAIN
Published: December 15, 2008

In research that touches on two of Americans’ great obsessions — coffee and cars — scientists at the University of Nevada, Reno, have made diesel fuel from used coffee grounds.
The technique is not difficult, they report in The Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, and there is so much coffee around that several hundred million gallons of biodiesel could potentially be made annually.

Mano Misra, a professor of engineering who conducted the research with Narasimharao Kondamudi and Susanta K. Mohapatra, said it was by accident that he realized coffee beans contained a significant amount of oil. “I made a coffee one night but forgot to drink it,” he said. “The next morning I saw a layer of oil floating on it.” He and his team thought there might be a useful amount of oil in used grounds, so they went to several Starbucks stores and picked up about 50 pounds of them.

Analysis showed that even the grounds contained about 10 to 15 percent oil by weight. The researchers then used standard chemistry techniques to extract the oil and convert it to biodiesel. The processes are not particularly energy intensive, Dr. Misra said, and the researchers estimated that biodiesel could be produced for about a dollar a gallon.
One hurdle, Dr. Misra said, is in collecting grounds efficiently — there are few centralized sources of coffee grounds. But the researchers plan to set up a small pilot operation next year using waste from a local bulk roaster.

Even if all the coffee grounds in the world were used to make fuel, the amount produced would be less than 1 percent of the diesel used in the United States annually. “It won’t solve the world’s energy problem,” Dr. Misra said of his work. “But our objective is to take waste material and convert it to fuel.” And biodiesel made from grounds has one other advantage, he said: the exhaust smells like coffee.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/science/16objava.html?_r=1&ref=earth




Commentary by Erin Brennan

While this solution will not solve all of the energy problems the world might have, I think that this kind of innovation is a good step in the right direction. Rather than filling up our landfills, food waste such as coffee grounds can be converted into fuel. This is exactly the lines of thinking we should be headed toward in the future - turning previously unuseable waste products into something useful and even profitable.

Living sustainably and in harmony with the planet needs to become priority. There are so many green options available today - from green design, to composting, biodegradable containers and recycling programs, to solar, wind, and geothermal energy - that everyone is given the opportunity to live more ecofriendly. Daily, we are presented with new and increasingly more innovative ideas as to how we can integrate modern technology with compassion and care for the ecological wonders around us. It is becoming increasingly more profitable for companies to "go green," and with energy costs on the rise, more individuals are seeking out ways to lower costs and increasing energy efficiency at home and on the road.

And of course, when sitting in traffic, I would rather smell the rich aroma of coffee than noxious chemical fumes coming from the car in front of me!