The coffee grounds used to produce your morning jolt of java could end up generating another type of fuel – biodiesel to run a car, truck or train.
A small Ontario company has developed a system to collect grounds from retail coffee chains and convert them to the biodiesel that will increasingly be needed to meet government requirements for the clean-burning fuel.
So far, Energy Innovation Corp. is collecting grounds from only about 100 coffee outlets in Southern Ontario, and is producing just a few hundred thousand litres of biodiesel at a pilot plant near Port Colborne on Lake Erie. But it has big plans to build eight bigger biodiesel operations across the province in the next few years.
Chief executive officer Jon Dwyer said the company expects to have its first full-scale plant, capable of generating three million litres of biodiesel annually, up and running in Oakville, just outside Toronto, within six months.
Biodiesel is a clean-burning fuel that is produced from organic material such as fats, oilseeds and restaurant grease. It is usually blended with regular petroleum-based diesel to run in diesel motors, but it can often be used in its pure form with no modifications to an engine.
EIC’s coffee retailers have their grounds picked up by a waste management company that also collects all their other garbage. The waste management company puts the grounds in a special dryer, which removes any water and extracts the natural oil from the grounds. That oil is then sent to EIC’s plant, which turns it into biodiesel fuel.
Coffee will make up just one-third of the biomass that EIC will use in its biodiesel refineries. The other two-thirds will be flax, which the company will buy from farmers in Southern Ontario. The byproduct from the flax processing will be sold as flax flour for human consumption, and for cattle and fish feed.
Mr. Dwyer acknowledges that fuel made from coffee grounds will never generate a large portion of Canada’s needs. But he insists it is important to highlight the potential uses for organic material that is now discarded. “We have to prove to people that biodiesel is sustainable,” he said.
EIC plans to collect as much as 16 million kilograms of coffee from 500 stores in Southern Ontario by 2013. It wants to build plants in cities such as Hamilton and Sarnia, where it can use local waste and buy flax from local farmers, then sell its fuel to customers in the region.
The company has held talks with Metrolinx, the transportation agency for the Toronto region, about the possibility of supplying biodiesel to its vehicles. Using biodiesel would significantly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of the trains and buses, Mr. Dwyer said.
He noted that the federal government has mandated that by 2011, 2 per cent of diesel fuel sold in Canada must be made up of biodiesel. The actual starting date for the new regulation has not yet been set.
Gord Quaiattini, president of the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association, said the country’s biodiesel industry now has the capacity to generate about 160 million litres a year. But when the new regulations come into effect, as much as 600 million litres a year will be needed.
Most of that will have to be imported, he said, but it will also provide a strong domestic market for companies that can cost-effectively build new capacity.
Currently, the biggest Canadian biodiesel refiner is Biox Corp., whose plant in Hamilton produces a 60 million litres a year. It makes the fuel from seed oils, animal fats and recovered vegetable oils.
