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You may drive a car on Biodiesel developed from Coffee waste |
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New Technology
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Written by team josh
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Friday, 25 April 2008 |
 Soon you may found yourself driving a car which runs on the biodiesel made from the Coffee waste.
Manoranjan Misra, a professor of chemical and metallurgical engineering at the US-based University of Nevada, Reno, has developed a novel process to extract high-quality biodiesel from spent coffee grounds.
His work is apart from other biodiesel efforts because of the high quality of the biodiesel extracted from coffee grounds. The process also utilises an inexpensive waste product, thus reducing overall cost.
“We have found that biodiesel created from spent coffee grounds is stable over a longer period of time than other forms of biodiesel that have been created from feed stocks such as soy and corn,” Misra said. “Biodiesel from spent coffee grounds is a low-cost ‘green’ form of fuel that shows a significant reduction of carbon dioxide emission. It’s an excellent source for biodiesel.”
Using US-based coffee franchise Starbucks as an example, Misra said that the coffee-making giant generates more than 90 million kgs of spent coffee grounds per year in the United States, alone.
“We estimate that this could produce almost 11 million litres of biodiesel per year,” Misra said.
Misra’s process, which has been patented, involves two simple steps: The extraction of oil from the spent coffee grounds, and then the conversion of the oil to biodiesel.
“The oil still smells like coffee,” he said. “It doesn’t change a lot during the process.”
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Last Updated ( Friday, 25 April 2008 )
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