Many actions have been undertaken worldwide to cope with climate change and to effectively reach the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It is well known that  policies for the development of enabling technologies and incentives to promote their wide applications, have been largely adopted in many cases. However, the potential contribution of changes in individual behaviours still represents an underestimated field of improvement, despite many scholars have already evidenced  how   biosolutions can help address the challenges underpinning the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  Biofuels  for example play a particularly important role in decarbonising transport by providing a low-carbon solution.

What is biodiesel? Biodiesel is a plant fuel obtained from renewable sources, generally vegetable and animal fats. But a new approach to make biodiesel production simple comes from, unbeliavable but thruth ,  coffe ground.

Italy has an original record: the second most drunk beverage in the country, after water, is coffee. However the first experimentation occurred in Great Britain many years ago.  Great Britain uses coffee grounds as fuel? Yes!  In Great Britain it has been  a reality for long years. 500 thousand tons of coffee grounds per year, it is estimated that this is the amount of material discarded by British citizens. Most of these wastes are then disposed of together with waste, thus contributing to the production of harmful greenhouse gases. According to the New York Times, in 2015 London buses, almost 10 thousand in total, consumed around 240 million liters of diesel. Numbers that therefore justify a search for alternative solutions. Using them to produce fuel could instead reduce the impact on the environment, limiting the amount of waste to be disposed of and reducing polluting emissions from buses. The use of coffee oil as fuel would in fact allow to reduce bus emissions by 10-15%. That’s why  there are many buses in  London,  the famous red double-decker ones that have been powered by a special fuel made from coffee grounds. Thanks to a British start-up that launched this pilot project, in agreement with the London Transport Authority. So far, 6,000 liters of coffee fuel have been produced, enough to power a city bus for a year.

How is coffee biodiesel produced?  I am proud to explain it to you, having been involved as a student for  this year’s PCTO ( Percorso di competenze trasversali ed orientmento – Pathways for Transversal Skills and Orientation) course with the partnership of the University of Salerno – Fisciano. The innovative course and  project were  based on bioresource technology and nanotechonology for a sustainable future. I’ll explain briefly. This study proposes the development of an active biocatalyst (commercial lipase Thermomyces lanuginosus) taken from microorganisms and stabilized on a magnetic nanoparticle support for the production of biodiesel using spent coffee grounds as raw material. The biocatalyst was selected through a screening of enzymes or microorganisms capable of converting the oils present in coffee grounds into biodiesel. It was then linked to gold-coated magnetic nanoparticles to give greater chemical stability and oleic acids which create a protective barrier to prevent them from aggregating and to disperse them easily in organic solvents. Subsequently, the oleic acids were replaced with citric acid to make the nanoparticles hydrophilic (they disperse in water). Then, the reaction conditions were optimised, including temperature, pH and ratio between substrate and catalyst, also evaluating the quantity of methanol, to be inserted gradually, in order to maximize the yield and quality of the biodiesel produced. The results indicate that the developed biocatalyst demonstrated high effectiveness in transforming ground waste coffee oils into biodiesel, with satisfactory yields and acceptable quality characteristics. This  active biocatalyst is a promising strategy that  offers numerous advantages in terms of efficiency, sustainability and reduction of environmental impact. The work provides a solid basis from which to undertake further research and the development of large-scale industrial processes for the production of biodiesel from renewable sources. By the way the experts at the University of Salerno – Fisciano used  spent coffee ground (SCG)  obtained from Kimbo coffee