(Notícia em Inglês)
Anyone who’s ever heard decaffeinated coffee referred to as “unleaded” knows the intimate relationship between coffee and fuel. Now researchers at the University of Missouri have gone one step further, and are working on a method to convert used coffee grounds into biodiesel, reports The Maneater, the university’s student paper (via the Huffington Post).
Researchers and staff collected the coffee grounds from the faculty cafeteria and a local Starbucks, then extracted oil from the grounds and converted the oil into biodiesel. The research team is testing the fuel on a diesel engine in their laboratory, but any biodiesel that is successfully developed could also be blended with home heating oil.
Used coffee grounds are an attractive alternative to soybeans, a common biodiesel feedstock, because used coffee grounds are not a potential food source. Additionally, like another biodiesel feedstock, waste cooking oil (which is used by Tri-State Biodiesel, for example), coffee grounds would otherwise be thrown away. Converting coffee grounds to biodiesel is a way of recycling.
heatingoil.com»
Anyone who’s ever heard decaffeinated coffee referred to as “unleaded” knows the intimate relationship between coffee and fuel. Now researchers at the University of Missouri have gone one step further, and are working on a method to convert used coffee grounds into biodiesel, reports The Maneater, the university’s student paper (via the Huffington Post).
Researchers and staff collected the coffee grounds from the faculty cafeteria and a local Starbucks, then extracted oil from the grounds and converted the oil into biodiesel. The research team is testing the fuel on a diesel engine in their laboratory, but any biodiesel that is successfully developed could also be blended with home heating oil.
Used coffee grounds are an attractive alternative to soybeans, a common biodiesel feedstock, because used coffee grounds are not a potential food source. Additionally, like another biodiesel feedstock, waste cooking oil (which is used by Tri-State Biodiesel, for example), coffee grounds would otherwise be thrown away. Converting coffee grounds to biodiesel is a way of recycling.
heatingoil.com»