QuoteCoffee could replace diesel

Many people find that coffee is a good source of fuel in the morning, but now that could literally become the case - as bio-diesel sourced from coffee beans could soon run our cars. And, some will be most pleased to note, the fuel maintains that pleasant coffee aroma.

Researchers at the University of Nevada have found that ground coffee is 10-15 percent oil, which is easily extractable and turned into bio-diesel. Whats more, it could be offered for as little as 60p per US gallon - thats around 16p per litre!

Coffee is in abundant enough supply to provide hundreds of millions of gallons of fuel every year, and the oil can be extracted from leftover grounds - so we shouldnt find ourselves missing out on our morning coffee for the sake of fuel.

And the find was stumbled across by accident, according to chief researcher Mano Misra, who said: "I had left my coffee out one night, and the next morning, I noticed that there was a kind of oil around the edge of the cup." Misra then collected used ground coffee from Starbucks and found extracting the oil was easy.

There are over 7.2 million tonnes of coffee produced worldwide each year from which to extract fuel and its also more stable than traditional bio-fuel because of coffees high antioxidant content. A larger scale pilot scheme is now underway to see how viable coffee could be as a genuine fuel source.

http://uk.cars.yahoo.com/09012009/36/coffee-replace-diesel-0.html

OK, Im  usually very sceptical myself of  alternative fuel sources but this seems a worthwhile option to take. Even though it wont provide that much actual fuel IMO every bit counts.

So long as the process only makes use of the leftover used ground coffee, and doesnt end up doing what the palm oil and other biofuels did with reducing edible crops down to a minimum and causing shortages, its pretty cool.

^^^ thats all kind of backfired now....

with the recent reductions in diesel prices most of the (large) biodiesel factories in the UK have either closed down, or just shut down production for now... which means the arse has fallen out of the used oil market...used veg oil (which I run on) is 12p/litre now :-)