{"id":6093,"date":"2015-09-04T10:34:01","date_gmt":"2015-09-04T10:34:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=6093"},"modified":"2015-09-04T10:34:01","modified_gmt":"2015-09-04T10:34:01","slug":"waste-coffee-used-as-fuel-storage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/waste-coffee-used-as-fuel-storage\/","title":{"rendered":"Waste coffee used as fuel storage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientists have developed a simple process to treat waste coffee grounds to allow them to store methane. The simple soak and heating process develops a carbon capture material with the additional environmental benefits of recycling a waste product.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Copyright<\/a>
Copyright : Editor at Large\/WikimediaCommons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Methane capture and storage provides a double environmental return \u2013 it removes a harmful greenhouse gas from the atmosphere that can then be used as a fuel that is cleaner than other fossil fuels.<\/span>

The process developed by the researchers, based at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), South Korea, involves soaking the waste coffee grounds in sodium hydroxide and heating to 700-900 \u00b0C in a furnace. This produced a stable carbon capture material in less than a day \u2013 a fraction of the time it takes to produce carbon capture materials.<\/span>

<\/p>\n

[pullquote]The absorbency of coffee grounds may be the key to successful activation of the material for carbon capture.\u00a0[\/pullquote]<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big thing is we are decreasing the fabrication time and we are using cheap materials,\u201d explains Christian Kemp, an author of the paper now based at Pohang University of Science and Technology, Korea. \u201cThe waste material is free compared to all the metals and expensive organic chemicals needed in other processes \u2013 in my opinion this is a far easier way to go.\u201d<\/span>

Kemp found inspiration in his cup of coffee whilst discussing an entirely different project with colleagues at UNIST. \u201cWe were sitting around drinking coffee and looked at the coffee grounds and thought \u2018I wonder if we can use this for methane storage?\u2019\u201d he continues.<\/span>

The absorbency of coffee grounds may be the key to successful activation of the material for carbon capture. \u201cIt seems when we add the sodium hydroxide to form the activated carbon it absorbs everything,\u201d says Kemp. \u201cWe were able to take away one step in the normal activation process \u2013 the filtering and washing \u2013 because the coffee is such a brilliant absorbant.\u201d<\/span>

The work also demonstrates hydrogen storage at cryogenic temperatures, and the researchers are now keen to develop hydrogen storage in the activated coffee grounds at less extreme temperatures.<\/span><\/p>\n

The results are published in the journal Nanotechnology.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Methane capture and storage provides a double environmental return \u2013 it removes a harmful greenhouse gas from the atmosphere that can then be used as a fuel that is cleaner than other fossil fuels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":6094,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","category-research"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/3013.jpg",300,225,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/3013-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/3013.jpg",300,225,false],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/3013.jpg",300,225,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/3013.jpg",300,225,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/3013.jpg",300,225,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/3013.jpg",300,225,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/3013.jpg",300,225,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/3013.jpg",300,225,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/3013.jpg",300,225,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/3013.jpg",300,225,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/3013.jpg",300,225,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/3013.jpg",300,225,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/3013.jpg",87,65,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/3013.jpg",300,225,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/3013.jpg",96,72,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/3013.jpg",150,113,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Environment<\/a> Research<\/a>","tag_info":"Research","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}