Only about 20 percent of the coffee bean contributes to the flavor and aroma of the drink—the rest is tasteless plant fiber. That means that there’s a lot of stuff left over when coffee is produced—hundreds of thousands of tons of it a day. Scientists are working hard to come up with a useful way to use the waste.
Researchers at the Maine Technology Institute have investigated ways to turn spent coffee grounds into fuel pellets to be burned for energy, and one coffee production company already sends its waste to a nearby biomass plant to be burned along with wood.
Another group of scientists has devised a way to use coffee grounds to produce an alcoholic drink, by fermenting the grounds and distilling them in a method similar to the production of whiskey. The result is a beverage the makers claim has “organoleptic quality acceptable for human consumption.” They might need to work on a tagline. Posted by Greg Szczecinski
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