America’s Addiction Fuels Desire For Coffee Ground Biodiesel
Researchers are reporting they have successfully made a high quality biodiesel from spent coffee grounds. They estimate that the coffee ground biodiesel industry could generate as much as $8,000,000 in profits annually using waste from US Starbucks stores alone.
One of the main limits to the acceptance of biodiesel as an alternative fuel is its price premium above regular diesel. To bring the price of biodiesel down, the industry uses as much waste material from other industries as possible to make it — such as used fryer oil and animal fats from poultry processing.
In holding with the idea of cheap biodiesel feedstocks, a team of researchers in the Chemical and Materials Engineering Department at the University of Nevada figured that maybe spent coffee grounds would fit the bill too.
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And boy do they ever. Not only do spent coffee grounds have a relatively large amount of oil (about 15% — almost all of which can be converted into biodiesel using standard methods), biodiesel made from the grounds has a long shelf life due to the large amount of antioxidants in coffee. Antioxidants slow the process of rancidification.
There’s a bonus too: at the end of the biodiesel extraction and conversion process, the leftover grounds can be turned into fuel pellets for wood stoves and boilers, closing the waste loop (or at least putting most of the carbon and nutrients that had recently been used by the plant to grow back into the atmosphere where they can again be used by plants to grow).
Given that Starbucks generates 210 million pounds of spent coffee grounds per year in the US, the researchers calculate that it could amount to 2.92 million gallons of biodiesel and 89,000 tons of fuel pellets. After taking out operating costs, and assuming a sale value of $4.50/gallon of biodiesel and $225/ton of fuel pellets, that amount equals just over $8 million of profits per year (view calculations).
Conducting my own calculations, even at $3/gallon for biodiesel, profits would be in the $4 million per year range.
Anybody in Seattle listening?
Photo Credit: How can I recycle this’s Flickr photostream under a Creative Commons License.
Sources: ArsTechnica and Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry (subs req’d)
Put all this recovered oil through Asian and German high efficiency diesel/electric hybrid vehicles instead of feeding the current 1930’s technology U.S. diesel engines and we have the oil crisis solved! Why can’t Americans build efficient diesel engines? Why don’t we just copy German designs and lie about it? Then, we wouldn’t have to crack a bbl of oil to gasoline and add a bunch of expensive chemical to it to burn it!
This is very cool technology. I love reading about advances like this. Now that fuel prices are coming back down, however (gasoline national average price just came down to $1.80/gal. as of this writing), alternative fuels are going to go on the back burner for a while. (Some analysts are predicting even lower gas prices in Jan./Feb. 2009 as people are paying their holiday bills and staying home to save money.) I just hope they get revived when they’re needed.
Tim,
If we’re smart we’ll continue to be proactive about biofuels and other sources of alternative energy so that we don’t get caught with our pants down like the Big Three Detroit automakers.
No more missing the boat on our way to a catastrophe.
Uhhh, what’s wrong with these fools in Nevada? Brazil has already been doing this for years:
http://www.brazzilmag.com/content/view/3500/1/
http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/brazil/4060.html
How much of a “researcher” are you if you can’t even be bothered to do a Google search?
greg,
The first link you provide makes no mention of coffee. Most regular readers of gas 2.0 know that Brazil is on the cutting edge of biofuel production already (just search through our archives for “Brazil”).
The second one looks like it describes what was mostly just an idea with no actual research to support it. That’s what’s interesting about the development highlighted in this post. Do you have any information on whether or not the Brazilians were actually able to implement their idea of turning waste coffee beans to biodiesel? If not, your claim that they have “been doing it for years” is an empty one.
I have to say, a morning commute that smells like fresh-brewed Folgers sounds like a happy dance in heaven.
Another Stunt, First diesel better not be 4.50 a gallon when it is selling for under 3.00 right now. Second 2.92 million gallons of bio diesel isn’t a lot and finally Starbuck’s maybe going out of business. Algae is the way to go for biodiesel
Wow as a coffee lover, this is the ultimate bomb. Tastes delicious, great caffiene pick me up, nutritious antioxodants for my heart and circulatory system. Then…Fuel for the big rigs and jettas followed by bio stove pellets! Pretty cool…
See, Roystarman is right sounds liek Algae IS great, but lets not get stuck on a single source. Seems like there are a few biodoesel stocks better than soybeans on the horizon, loke even fungus and stuff. I read about many of them right here.
One other thing. What the heck, all they’re talking about in regards to this bailout electrics. I don’t care if petroleun is $1 a barrel, Biofuels are a great option. Why does the mainstream overlook all the cool crap I read about in this blog. They seem to ignore all the real green, promising stuff going on here. I still think liquid biofues must be our next step if they’re not the end game. End of rant.
Wow, with all those typos I had there you’d think I had been consuming some of that other combustable biofuel instead of coffee.
One other comment here if I may…we need more than Jettas to burn the stuff. What happened to the Honda/Acura, Subaru, and Kia Borrego promises of USA diesels? Seems like they were vapor.
To Roystarman,
I think that 2.92 million barrels is just Starbucks. This does not take into account the leading seller of coffee in America: McDonalds. Add in all the other fast food chains plus Waffle House and you could produce 100s of millions of bio-diesel from waste grounds. I think that is a very significant amount of fuel.