LONDON: Scientists have developed a simple ‘soak and heating’ process which treats waste coffee grounds to enable them to store the harmful greenhouse gas methane.
Methane capture and storage provides a double environmental return – it removes a harmful greenhouse gas from the atmosphere that can then be used as a fuel that is cleaner than other fossil fuels.
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 degrees Celsius in a furnace.
This produced a stable carbon capture material in less than a day – a fraction of the time it takes to produce carbon capture materials.
“The big thing is we are decreasing the fabrication time and we are using cheap materials,” said Christian Kemp, an author of the study now based at Pohang University of Science and Technology.
