Charred coffee grounds could make concrete up to 30 percent stronger, scientists in Australia have discovered. Your clever recipe could solve multiple problems at once. Each year, the world produces about 10 billion kilograms (22 billion pounds) of coffee waste, most of which ends up in landfills. published in 2023. With a booming construction market globally, there is increasing demand for resource-intensive concrete, creating another set of environmental challenges. Watch the video below for a summary of the study: frameborder=”0″ enable=”accelerometer; autoplay; writing on clipboard; encrypted media; gyroscope; picture in picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” enablefullscreen> “The continued mining of natural sand around the world (typically mined from riverbeds and banks) to meet the growing demands of the construction industry has a major impact on the environment,” said RMIT engineer Jie Li. “There are critical and long-standing challenges to maintaining a sustainable supply of sand due to the finite nature of the resources and the environmental impacts of sand mining. sand. With a circular economy approach, we could keep organic waste out of landfill and also better preserve our natural resources like sand. “Organic products like coffee grounds cannot be added directly to concrete because they leach chemicals that weaken the strength of the building material. Global demand for sand is increasing, as is its environmental impacts. (Pixabay/Pexels) So, using low levels of energy, the team heated the coffee waste to more than 350°C (about 660°F) while depriving it of oxygen. This process is called pyrolysis and it breaks down the organic molecules, which which results in a carbon-rich porous carbon called biochar that can form bonds and therefore be incorporated into the cement matrix. Roychand and his colleagues also tried to pyrolyze coffee grounds at 500 °C, but the resulting biochar particles were not as strong Scanning electron microscope images of the surface structures of the pyrolyzed coffee grounds (Roychand et al., Journal of Cleaner Production, 2023) The researchers. They warned that they still need to evaluate the long-term durability of their cement product. They are now working on testing how the coffee-cement hybrid behaves under freeze/thaw cycles, water absorption, abrasions and many more stressors. The team is also working on creating biochar from other organic waste sources, including wood, food and agriculture. things go to landfill to minimize impact on the environment.” Related: A way of drinking coffee could help you live longer, study says Victoria, made from coffee biochar concrete along with a wood chip and biochar section and a standard concrete control section. Later that year, Victoria’s Big Build used coffee biochar concrete for a footpath in the Pakenham Roads Upgrade, the first major infrastructure project to use it, and the contractor BildGroup estimated the work diverted approximately 140,000 coffee grounds from landfill and saved more than 3 metric tonnes (3.3 US tonnes) of sand. In early 2025, the RMIT team received the People’s Choice Problem Solver award at Universities Australia’s Shaping Australia Awards and said they were working with a commercialization partner to build a business case for bringing the material to market. Cleaner Production. This article was fact-checked by Fiona MacDonald and edited by Fiona MacDonald. While we take pride in our process, we are human to know.
