{"id":494179,"date":"2026-06-25T03:01:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T03:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/494179\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T03:01:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T03:01:09","slug":"scientists-say-new-method-turns-coffee-grounds-into-high-potency-renewable-fuel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/494179\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Say New Method Turns Coffee Grounds Into High-Potency Renewable Fuel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">Sign up to see the future, today<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">Can\u2019t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech<\/p>\n<p class=\"pw-incontent-excluded article-paragraph skip\">How long does it take to convert soggy coffee grounds into a highly efficient fuel source? About as long as it takes to brew a fresh pot of java, researchers say.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">According to a <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/news\/2026-06-coffee-grounds-high-grade-solid.html\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">press release<\/a> from South Korea\u2019s National Research Council of Science and Technology, a team of researchers at the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM) have developed a method to convert spent coffee waste into high-quality charcoal, known as biochar.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">While that\u2019s a feat in and of itself, the kicker is the method\u2019s blistering speed: it takes just 90 seconds from start to finish, with no drawn-out drying process or oil separation required. According to the release, the new technique solves a major issue in extracting the latent energy potential of spent coffee beans.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">Though we generate anywhere from 8 to 10 million tons of high-energy coffee waste a year, the vast majority of that ends up occupying space in landfills. While other <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/abs\/pii\/S2214799323001261\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">coffee recycling techniques<\/a> do exist, the high moisture content of spent beans has made energy extraction a massive chore, preventing the kind of efforts that could give bean juice a second life at scale.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">To get around this, the KIGAM team developed a technique known as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S1385894726039136\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Flame Plasma Pyrolysis<\/a> (FPP), in which coffee waste is put under immense pressure using plasma as hot as 1,652 degrees Fahrenheit. Basically, the method superheats the moisture trapped within the beans to kick off hundreds of microscopic explosions, leading to the creation of tiny, porous structures, and reducing the total biomass by as much as 83.3 percent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">By the end of the process, the researchers were left with a substance \u201ccomparable to that of anthracite coal.\u201d According to the researchers, the resulting biochar makes for great fuel, and also has applications as carbon material in industrial and environmental settings.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">On top of cutting down the processing time to just minutes \u2014 previous methods took hours \u2014 they say the FPP process cuts down on pollutants like smoke and tar during heating.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">\u201cThis technology presents a new paradigm in which waste is no longer viewed as a disposal problem but as a valuable energy resource,\u201d the study\u2019s lead author, Taejun Park, said in the press release. \u201cWe plan to expand the technology to various types of high-moisture organic waste and further optimize the process for industrial-scale commercialization.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">More on renewable energy: <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/science-energy\/solar-produced-more-electricity-coal-united-states\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Solar Just Produced More Electricity Than Coal for the First Time in the History of the United States<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up to see the future, today Can\u2019t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech How&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494180,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":["post-494179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}