Diesel, made simply from coffee grounds (ah, the exhaust aroma)

By Henry Fountain
Published: December 16, 2008

In research that touches on two of Americans' great obsessions — coffee and cars — scientists at the University of Nevada, Reno, have made diesel fuel from used coffee grounds.

The technique is not difficult, they report in The Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, and there is so much coffee around that several hundred million gallons of biodiesel could potentially be made annually.

Dr. Mano Misra, a professor of engineering who conducted the research with Narasimharao Kondamudi and Susanta K. Mohapatra, said it was by accident that he realized coffee beans contained a significant amount of oil. "I made a coffee one night but forgot to drink it," he said. "The next morning I saw a layer of oil floating on it." He and his team thought there might be a useful amount of oil in used grounds, so they went to several Starbucks stores and picked up about 50 pounds of them.

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Coffee Wearables and Gifts

World Coffee Deficit May Be 8 Million Bags in 2009-10

By Claire Leow
Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) -- World coffee consumption may outstrip production by as much as 8 million bags in 2009-10 because of the smaller crop in Brazil, the top grower, said Nestor Osorio, International Coffee Organization Executive Director.

``It's a tight situation that will support prices,'' Osorio said in an interview today in Ho Chi Minh City.

Prices of the mild-tasting arabica coffee used by Starbucks Corp. jumped 6.1 percent yesterday, the biggest gain in almost three years as Brazil's Agriculture Minister Reinhold Stephanes said output may drop as much as 22 percent next year to as low as 36 million bags. Prices of the bitter-tasting robusta used in espresso and instant coffee by Nestle SA climbed 4.3 percent.

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Talking With The King Of Coffee

NEW YORK, Dec. 8, 2008 | by Katie Couric

Katie Couric speaks exclusively with Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. (CBS)

(CBS) He's the king of coffee, who oversees more than 16,000 Starbucks worldwide, and for putting lingo like "can I have a doppio espresso macchiato" into everyday lexicon.

"Why do you have to do that? Why can't you say small, medium and large like normal people?" CBS News anchor Katie Couric asked Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks.

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