Coffee Grounds Can Absorb Global Warming-Causing Methane Through a Simple Treatment
Tech Times noted on their article published on Wednesday that scientists have found a way to convert coffee grounds used in compost, allowing them to act as sponges that absorb greenhouse gas methane, which causes global warming.
In order to come up with methane sponges, the coffee grounds are submerged in a solution that consists of ingredients found in oven cleaners and are boiled in a furnace with a temperature of over 700 degrees Celsius. This process will hopefully eradicate methane from the atmosphere. It could even be used in natural gas fuel cells.
"The big thing is we are decreasing the fabrication time and we are using cheap materials," said one of the study's authors Christian Kemp of Pohang University of Science and Technology, Korea. "The waste material is free compared to all the metals and expensive organic chemicals needed in other processes. In my opinion, this is a far easier way to go."
Activated carbon or activated charcoal is absorbent enough to wash away the toxins in people who experience poison-ingestion or drug overdose. With coffee grounds being absorbent as well, scientists have been able to do away with the filtering and washing methods, which are usually done to activate a material's carbon.
In the method conducted by the scientists, the coffee grounds' carbon are activated during the treating process and heating process in the furnace. These steps are enough to make the coffee grounds absorb methane gas and fight global warming.
On an article published today by the Business Insider, methane is the second most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, with carbon dioxide topping the list. In a period of a century, it has been found that methane is 25 times more harmful in global warming compared to carbon dioxide.
The fast and low cost way of turning coffee grounds into methane sponges can help save the world from global warming without causing hazards to humans, considering that current methods are expensive, heavy and dangerous.
