Coffee Runs Your Life, Now it Can Run Your Car
Forget E85, hemp diesel, or sugar ethanol -- researchers say the fuel of the future might be sitting in a mug next to your computer right now. That's right: coffee diesel. You're probably thinking, "oh great, another food-based biofuel that's going to drive up the price of coffee, which I'll pay any price for because I'm addicted to caffeine." At least, that's what I thought. The good thing about coffee diesel is that it's made from post consumer coffee, i.e. coffee grounds. Nice.According to Treehugger, coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world. Anybody want to guess what the first is? Since coffee grounds are so abundant, and their oil content (11-20%) so similar to other feedstocks like palm, rapeseed, and soybeen oil -- these guys might really be onto something here. Mano Misra, Susanta Mohapatra, and Narasimharao Kondamudi are the minds spearheading the study, and by their calculations spent coffee grounds could add a modest 340M barrels of biodiesel to the world supply. Not to mention, coffee's high antioxidant content keeps it more stable than other biodiesels and when it burns... it smells like coffee.
[via Treehugger]
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