Biofuel made from waste coffee grounds to power London buses from today
Biofuel company bio-bean and petrol firm Shell have teamed up to produce a biofuel made from waste coffee grounds for some of Transport for London’s huge fleet buses.
There is certainly a steady supply of waste coffee in London, with the average Londoner drinking 2.3 cups of coffee a day, producing more than 200,000 tonnes of waste a year. Bio-bean collects some of the waste coffee grounds left behind from high street chains, such as Caffe Nero, and factories and saves them from going to landfill, a waste stream that has the potential to emit 126 million kilogrammes of C02.
Working in collaboration with its fuel partner Argent Energy, the coffee grounds are dried and processed prior to the extraction of the coffee oil, which is then blended into a B20 biofuel. So far, 6,000 litres of coffee oil have been produced, which if used as a pure-blend for the bio component and mixed with mineral diesel to form a B20 biofuel, could help power the equivalent of one London bus for a year.
Bio-bean’s innovation is being supported by Shell as part of the petrol firm’s #makethefuture energy relay, which supports entrepreneurs turning promising energy projects into positive impacts for communities around the world.
Bio-bean has already made strides in producing energy from coffee waste with its Coffee Logs - biomass pellets and briquettes that can be burned for fuel. The coffee logs are made from waste coffee grounds that are then processed at bio-bean’s reprocessing facility in Cambridgeshire and turned into Coffee Logs.