Getting Both Your Mind and Car Running: Coffee Is The New Biofuel
The first diesel engine, invented by Rudolph Diesel in Germany, ran on pure peanut oil. Eventually crude oil was used because it was cheaper to produce and easier to work with. However, the concern for the environment and the extreme fluctuations in crude oil prices have brought biodiesels back on the scene. Lots of people have made their own from leftover fast-food oil with good, but pungent results. Big agribusinesses got into it when the government began to subsidize corn ethanol.
Well, move over agribusinesses and quit spraying your car with Febreeze to get out the greasy smell. Â There is a biofuel in town, and it’s made from waste products that won’t make your car smell like Chinese food. Instead, there will be just a faint whiff of coffee, which is probably not such a bad thing during a morning commute. Researchers Narasimharao Kondamudi, Susant Mohapatra, and Manoranjan Misra of the University of Nevada at Reno have devised a process by which used coffee grounds can be turned into biodiesel.
The process is both amazingly cheap and efficient to do. An interview with Dr. Mirsa revealed just how easy it is.  His process, which is already patented, “involves two simple steps: the extraction of oil from the spent coffee grounds, and then the conversion of the oil to biodiesel” (link). Yielding 10-15% of biodiesel by weight, the researchers estimate that a medium-sized processing plant could do the biodeisel extraction for about a $1 per gallon. The next best part is that afterwards the grounds can still be used for compost. And, like any biodiesel made from waste products, using old coffee grounds won’t displace crops.
A further advantage is that unmodified oils from plants, like the peanut oil used by Diesel in the 19th century, have high viscosity and require engine alterations. Diesel derived from coffee is less thick and can usually be burned in an engine with little or no tinkering.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, more than 7 million tons of coffee are consumed each year. That’s a lot of joe. The researchers estimate that those leftover grounds could produce about 340 million gallons of biodiesel. A business could go around collecting the leftover grounds from coffee shops and cafeterias. In fact, the coffee waste used by the researchers at the University of Nevada was donated by a local Starbucks. It’s cheap fuel, great PR, and good for the environment.
Coffee, it really is good to the last drop.
April 3, 2009
Tags: agriculture, energy, food, food event, greenhouse gases, innovation, waste Posted in: Science & Technology
3 Responses
biodiesel fuels are less polluting and more renewable compared to fossil fuels like conventional diesel
@Maisie You’re right about there being less pollution…in some cases. Biodiesel fuels really only become less polluting if they are the byproducts of another system (or I guess if you have zero input, xxx output system, which seems unlikely and against the laws of physics). If you’re growing, say, corn just to use it for biofuel you’re putting more energy into growing the corn than you’re going to get out of it: You need to grow the corn with polluting fertilizers, tractors, other labor, transportation, plus the high energy costs of its conversion into fuel. However, if you use waste products like coffee grounds or the leftover plant material from a crop, you really just need to focus on transport and the conversion process. You’re taking advantage of a system that has already polluted some and getting a little extra out of it. You’re making it “good to the last drop”.
biodiesel should be the stuff that we should put on our engines because it is a renewable fuel ..
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