Missouri University Researchers Turn Coffee to Biodiesel Fuel

Agriculture/Food Processing Residues nonfield crop, Feedstock, Missouri, Process, R & D Focus

May 20, 2010

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by Samantha Sunne (The Maneater) Researchers at the biofuel lab have found a way to skip the drying step.

MU researchers have found a way to convert the coffee grounds commonly found in beverages into biodiesel fuel.

Most biodiesel fuel in the U.S. is made from soybean oil, but the researchers developed an efficient process for extracting oil from used coffee, biological engineering assistant professor Bulent Koc said.

“The extraction process is one of the most energy-intensive processes in biodiesel production,” Koc said. “Once you have the oil, no matter where you get it, you can convert it into biodiesel.”

Koc and his staff spent six months drying used coffee grounds, extracting oil from them and converting that oil into biodiesel. They used grounds from the faculty cafeteria and from Starbucks, he said.

…”The goal here, then, is to take a product that we would otherwise simply throw away and actually capture the oil that remains in that product,” Schumacher said. “The amount of oil that’s in the coffee is very similar to the amount of oil that’s in a soybean.”

…The process of turning coffee grounds into biodiesel fuel is not new, Abdullah said. But the MU team found a way to extract the oil without drying the grounds, which saves time and energy. READ MORE

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