How many times can a product be used before it becomes useless? Researchers at NMBU are investigating whether they can employe used coffee grounds and shells from mussels, shrimp, or eggs to produce biodiesel in the most sustainable way possible.
A large part of Europe's emissions comes from vehicles that use petroleum-based fuels. If we are to achieve the EU's ambitious climate goals of reducing emissions by 55% by 2030, we need environmentally friendly fuels. At the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), researchers are working to produce biodiesel from waste. The goal is to use as many reusable materials as possible, making the entire production process more sustainable.
The main material is used coffee grounds.
"Norway is among the countries in the world where we drink the most cups of coffee per capita. That results in a lot of used coffee grounds," says Jorge Marchetti, professor of chemical engineering at NMBU.
He was wondering whether used coffee grounds could be used for something else before they end up in the trash.
"How many times can we use coffee grounds before they end up in the trash or compost? We try to extract as much as we can from the resources before we say they are useless," he says.
After we have brewed coffee and extracted what we want to use, such as the coffee flavor and caffeine, there is still a lot of nutrients left. Used coffee grounds are organic material and can be used for many different things. You can use it as fertilizer, soil improvement, or compost in the garden. Or more advanced: To produce biodiesel.
Food waste becomes new products
Jorge Marchetti leads a research project called UNPRECEDENTED. Here, researchers from Norway, Portugal, and Argentina collaborate to use waste materials to produce biodiesel. The goal is to make the production process as sustainable as possible and, in the long term, contribute to Europe's ambitious climate goals.
It is a complex chemical process that consists of several elements. For the oil from used coffee grounds to become biodiesel, it must be combined with an alcohol and a catalyst.
"The catalyst is a component that you need for the process to happen, which does not intervene in the process itself. For example, if you want to deep-fry an egg, you need oil. You don't eat the oil – you eat the egg. But without the oil, the egg will not be deep-fried," explains Marchetti.
In this project, the catalyst is also from waste materials. Researchers use calcium oxide, which can be found in shells from eggs, mussels, and shrimp. To produce fuel, you also need alcohol. The alcohol they use is renewable ethanol from sugar cane, for example.
The goal is to use bio-based and renewable solutions for every step of the process.
"We look at all the materials involved and how we can make the process more environmentally friendly. We want to make it as circular as possible in the sense that we use the end product of a product that would normally have been discarded," says Marchetti.
New method for biodiesel production
The UNPRECEDENTED project aims to develop a completely new method for producing biodiesel from waste oil. They do this by using a combination of experimental data and theoretical modeling called Density Functional Theory (DFT). Researchers use the model to understand what happens between the chemicals at the atomic level.
"When we use DFT, we can create a model that shows how the atoms in a substance interact with each other. The model gives us an idea of which chemical reactions can occur and how we can expect the substance to behave. This means we don't have to experiment as much in the laboratory," says Marchetti.
The DFT method gives researchers input on what they can expect in the laboratory. They get a hint about the most promising experiments – or which experiments they should not do. When researchers can conduct fewer experiments, it saves time, money, and resources.
What makes this research completely new is the combination of all the elements together.
"The elements we use have been tested before, but not together. We combine them to create a completely new production process for biodiesel. It is a combination of three or four small innovations together that makes the whole process new," says Marchetti.
The team are now halfway through the project period, and the results are promising. The models are accurate, and the method works. But for Marchetti, the most important thing is that the knowledge and methodology they build provide a solid framework that can be used by others.
"Of course, we aim to produce biodiesel from used coffee grounds. But if we don't succeed, we will still have laid the foundation for a new methodology that can be used in many other areas," he says.
He highlights fields such as medicine or materials science.
"This is a new approach that should serve not only our field but any field," says Marchetti.
Facts about the UNPRECEDENTED project
Background: The project aims to contribute to Europe's goal of becoming the first climate-neutral continent by 2050 by reducing emissions by 55% by 2030. A large part of the emissions comes from vehicles that use petroleum-based fuels.
Goal: The goal is to develop a method for producing biodiesel from waste oil using a combination of experimental data and theoretical modeling (Density Functional Theory, DFT).
Participants: The project is a Marie Curie Staff Exchange project funded by the EU Horizon Europe program. UNPRECEDENTED involves researchers from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in Norway, Universidad Nacional del Sur in Argentina, and Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa in Portugal. Professor Jorge Marchetti at NMBU leads the project.