Why Wet Coffee Grounds Might Be The Next Waste-To-Energy Goldmine
Rosneft Proposes Oil Firms to Refine 30% of Crude in Russia to Ease Fuel Crunch Haley Zaremba is an energy journalist and researcher with more than a decade of professional experience covering global energy systems, land and natural resources, and… A team of researchers at the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM) have just found a way to make biochar production faster and cheaper.
The new method solves a major challenge in standard biochar production processes and potentially unlocks a recycling stream that can divert millions of tons of waste away from landfill annually and turn it into a productive energy source at a time when new energy alternatives are needed more urgently than ever before.
Biochar is essentially charcoal that is made by heating up organic waste materials in an anaerobic environment.
The resulting material can offermultiple benefits: the biochar can function as a carbon sink capable of storing carbon dioxide for centuries or even up to millennia without breaking down into the soil, or it can be combusted like coal to create energy.
One of the issues with this second option is that the process of creating biochar is itself energy-intensive, nullifying its utility as an energy source.
But the breakthrough at KIGAM has changed this equation.
The KIGAM team discovered a way to create biochar from damp coffee grounds without first drying out the material, thereby skipping a time- and energy-intensive step of the standard biochar production process.
In fact, the process discovered by the team turns the moisture content into an asset rather than a liability.
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“As water trapped inside coffee particles rapidly turns into steam, pressure builds and creates microscopic explosions,” Interesting Engineering explained in arecent articleabout the breakthrough.
These explosions break up the coffee biomass through “flash evaporation” and create a more porous structure, which in turn accelerates the carbonization process.
The researchers describe this phenomenon as the “popcorn effect.” Not only does this popcorn effect remove a whole step from the biochar production process, thereby saving time, energy, and money, it creates a particularly promising form of biochar that has higher-than-normal heating value and no sulfur content, making it a relatively clean-burning alternative.
| Product | Price | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Brent Crude | $102.14/bbl | +0.34% |
| WTI Crude | $96.90/bbl | +0.21% |
| EN590 Diesel | $846/MT | +0.18% |
| Jet Fuel A-1 | $1090/MT | +0.55% |
| Mazut M100 | $450/MT | -0.15% |
| Bitumen 60/70 | $470/MT | +0.08% |
| Sulphur Gran 99.5% | $470/MT | -0.44% |
| Urea 46% Gran | $650/MT | +1.12% |
| NPK 16-16-16 | $460/MT | -0.28% |
| Nat Gas TTF | $15.42/MMBtu | +0.92% |
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