Scientists create diesel fuel from coffee grounds

by Stevie Smith - Dec 17 2008, 15:15

While car manufacturers continue to dabble with fossil fuel alternatives through the electricity-supported Prius and the hydrogen-powered Clarity, a team of researchers working out of the University of Nevada would perhaps prefer if the likes of Toyota and Honda quite literally woke up and smelt the coffee.

Cheap puns aside, scientists at the Reno-based centre of higher learning have created a biodiesel out of nothing more than coffee grounds. While it may seem somewhat unusual as a fuel solution, the university team claims the production technique is relatively simple and the world has such an abundance of coffee that hundreds of millions of gallons of the biodiesel could be produced every year.

According to a New York Times report, professor of engineering and lead researcher Dr. Mano Misra stumbled upon the concept of gleaning biodiesel from coffee after he saw a cup of the cold beverage with an oily substance sitting on its surface.

Looking into the possibility of used coffee grounds containing a significant amount of oil, Misra and his team promptly visited a number of Starbucks coffee shops and gathered together around 50lbs of waste grounds.

After studying the grounds, the team concluded that the coffee contained approximately 10 to 15 percent oil by weight, which it then proceeded to extract and convert into biodiesel.

In terms of manufacturing viability and future potential, Dr. Misra explained that production estimates suggest it would cost around a single U.S. dollar to create a gallon of fuel.

While converting waste materials into fuel is certainly a worthy pursuit, Dr. Misra has acknowledged that, as with many biofuel options, processing coffee grounds “won’t solve the world’s energy problem.”

More pointedly, even if the entire planet’s coffee grounds were converted into biofuel, it would result in the production of less than 1 percent of the diesel fuel being guzzled annually by vehicles across the United States.

In order to better test coffee grounds as a possible support solution to the dwindling supply of conventional fuel, the team of researchers intend to create a pilot project in 2009 through which they will process waste taken from a local bulk roaster.

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