Using coffee as a building material

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The waste problem is one of the key environmental issues of the coffee industry. Even if we managed to reduce waste related to packaging (and which fortunately, the vast majority is recyclable), the coffee industry produces approximately 10 million tons of waste per year related to used coffee. Although various uses have been proposed for used, ground coffee (using it as fertilizer or as a raw material for the production of pellets are two typical examples) most of it ends up in landfills. The invocation of "greenhouse gases" such as carbon dioxide and methane is another adverse consequence of reckless disposal of used coffee in landfills.

Could this bleak picture change? With a discovery by a research group, which makes coffee a raw material for... building activity, maybe yes!

Using ground coffee to produce cement

The recent boom in construction activity (and its projected continuation in the reconstruction of war-torn regions and countries) has led to an ever-increasing demand for sand, a key ingredient in the creation of concrete. Sand is usually mined from riverbeds and banks, with huge environmental impacts.

A team of researchers from RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia tried to think of a solution that would limit both the problem of excessive organic waste and the effects of the constant demand for large quantities of sand. And so, he ended up using the used, ground coffee for the production of concrete.

As coffee, being an organic product, cannot be added directly to the concrete, due to the release of chemicals that would weaken the building material, the pyrolysis solution was preferred. The coffee is heated to temperatures of around 650 degrees Celsius, in an oxygen-free environment. In this way, a porous "charcoal" rich in carbon is created, which can be incorporated as a material in any form of cement.



How likely is the adoption of coffee as a building material?

The scientific team has finalized, through experiments, many aspects of the process (such as the degrees and time of pyrolysis) in order to achieve the best possible result with the least environmental impact and is currently in the midst of extensive testing of the final product in freezing conditions , extreme heat, seismic vibrations, etc.

"Although our research has a long way to go, we are optimistic that we have in front of us an innovative method that will catalyze the environment in many areas, notes engineer Shannon Kilmartin-Lynch, a member of the research team.Given the more general adoption of measures and practices that can potentially slow down climate change, this idea cannot be ruled out to find wider application in the future.



The day when the well-known song will change to "Coffee, coffee, I built it for you" may not be far away!