Fuel To The Last Drop

Coffee Grounds

"Regular, unleaded or decaf?" Coffee may keep our eyes open, but coffee grounds might, someday, fuel our cars.

So says researcher Mano Misra at the University of Nevada-Reno, who studied coffee as a potential biofuel -- a gasoline or diesel substitute made from renewable biological matter that have had little effect on greenhouse gases.

Biofuels have powered vehicles for years. Think ethanol. And new sources and increasing demand are creating a growing market.

But a lack of low-cost, high-quality raw materials still hampers widespread use. Ethanol is made from corn and sugar beets and that means taking valuable farmland off-line for food crops.

That's where coffee filters in. Misra and colleagues say grounds contain up to 20 percent oil -- as much as corn and other sources. And coffee plants are already in production. Using the grounds for biodiesel would just make use of what ends up in the trash anyway.

How much biodiesel could coffee grounds add to the world's supply? Plenty. Misra estimates about 340 million gallons. And that's in a biodiesel market expected to hit three billion gallons annually by 2010.

And the best part? The end-product fuel smells like coffee! Seriously.

Script by Bob Rhein

Discovery Links

To learn more about today’s topic, please explore the links below:

• Waste coffee grounds offer new source of biodiesel fuel
• What is Biodiesel?
• Biodiesel: Technical Highlights