(ENGLAND)
A cup of coffee provides a nice energy boost but it is showing increasing promise as a source for making biofuels.
London’s bio-bean, for example, is leading the way in converting the popular pick-me-up into a clean fuel.
“Bio-bean is the first company in the world to industrialise the process of recycling waste coffee grounds into advanced biofuels and biochemicals,” its website says.
While researchers at England’s Lancaster University have developed a method to more efficiently extract oils from coffee grounds for use as biofuel. A team led by Dr Vesna Najdanovic-Visak has essentially simplified things by knocking out a few processes that would normally be used to make biofuel from coffee grounds.
“Our method vastly reduces the time and cost needed to extract the oils for biofuel making spent coffee grounds a much more commercially competitive source of fuel. A huge amount of spent coffee grounds, which are currently just being dumped in the landfill, could now be used to bring significant environmental benefits over diesel from fossil fuel sources,” said Dr Vesna Najdanovic-Visak.
