| 12 March 2010 |
| A Carpuccino Please! |
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A car that runs on coffee grounds is the latest attempt at a demonstration of a new green fuel. The car, which is actually a 1988 Volkswagen Scirocco that cost £400 has been developed by a team from a new BBC 1 science programme called ‘Bang goes the Theory’. The car was the brainchild of Jem Stansfield the Presenter of the programme who is an Engineer. Jem was inspired by a sign in a Sainsburys coffee shop that asked customers if they needed any used coffee grounds (they are generally used for the garden to deter pests such as slugs or to improve the soil). The custom car was built at Jems home in Brighton on an overall budget of £700.
The modified vehicle uses a gasification system to convert organic material such as coffee grounds into a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen that can be burned in the engine as a fuel. The problem is that running costs could be up to 50 times the costs of running the same car on petrol. A furnace at the back of the car ‘burns’ the coffee grounds in the absence of oxygen to produce the combustible gas mixture which is then cooled cleaned and piped to the engine.
The vehicle with its custom built propulsion system is being exhibited at the Big Bang Science Fair held in central Manchester in March 2010. The car made the 210 mile journey from London to Manchester running totally on the power that can be produced from coffee grounds (the equivalent of 11,760 espressos). This is not as convenient as it sounds as it has been determined by the Big Bang experts that the car will need to stop every 30-45 miles to refuel with it achieving only 3 miles per kilo (stops were also required to clean the gasification system removing soot and tar). The whole journey required 70 kilos of dry coffee grounds (used are as valuable as virgin grounds), which were provided by Costa Coffee. The journey was completed on 12th March and despite some slight traffic holdups the journey went well taking a little over 17 hours.
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