How KES help clients to recycle waste coffee grounds
International Coffee day is celebrated around the world each year, and falls this year on 1st October 2020.
The UK alone consumes around 95 million cups of coffee each day. This creates a huge amount of unnecessary waste as there are thousands of tonnes of spent coffee grounds that are thrown away in the process. A lot of this discarded resource goes to landfill, emitting harmful gases such as methane.
However in the past few years, a small number of companies have started to recycle spent coffee grounds into biofuels. What was once considered to be a waste product has been demonstrated to hold great value at an industrial scale.
The grounds can be made into either biomass pellets and used for heat and energy, or they can be turned into biodiesel and used to fuel the transport industry. Coffee grounds have a higher calorific value than wood, meaning that they release more heat when burning, making them both cheap and carbon neutral.
Knight Energy Services work with a variety of energy from waste operators, including companies that specialise in turning waste coffee grounds into biofuels.
Such companies are legally required to demonstrate that their biofuels are environmentally suitable, which is where KES come in. Clients will approach us to determine the quality of their waste materials by testing for ash content, moisture content, ash composition, ash fusion temperature, elemental analysis and trace metals.
After receiving the samples, they are mixed, ground and homogenised by the team at our dedicated solid fuels laboratories. The samples will then be analysed and KES will provide the results to clients through a report.
By establishing the fuel quality for our clients, they can ensure that they are compliant with internal and external criteria. Using waste coffee grounds for Biofuels production creates efficient and sustainable products for a range of markets and ultimately can help the UK to meet its renewable energy targets in the future.
To make an enquiry regarding waste coffee grounds testing, please get in touch.