When people think of alternative fuels for their cars, we doubt that coffee beans make the list. Yet a team of wacky inventors from the BBC1 science programme “Bang Goes The Theory” have managed to create a vehicle runs solely on gas produced by espresso roasted coffee granules!
Nicknamed Car-puccino, this 1988 VW Scirocco that looks like a bit like the Marty Mcfly’s time-travelling DeLorean DMC-12 from the ‘Back to the Future’ trilogy, has been heavily modified to us coffee granules to power the engine.
So how does it work? According to the graph, the first stage involves heating the coffee granules with charcoal until the beans break down into cool hydrogen and carbon monoxide.
The gas is then fed into a radiator to chill down before it is filtered out in the boot. The purified gas is then led through a rooftop pipe into the engine where it burns and powers the car.
Nick Watson, producer of Bang Goes The Theory, said: ‘Coffee, like wood or coal, has some carbon content so you can use it as a fuel. The coffee needs to be very dry and in pellets to allow the air to move through the pile of coffee as it burns. The brand doesn’t matter.’
But even though the Car-puccino is full of beans, it sure won’t please any bean counters with an estimated average consumption of 1 kilo / 2.2 pounds of ground coffee for every 4.8km / 3 miles (or about 56 espressos per mile).
The BBC1 team said that it is planning to cover a distance of 210 miles between Manchester and London using only coffee beans.
According to Daily Mail’s calculations, “the journey will use about 70 kilos of ground coffee which, at supermarket prices of between £13 and £26 a kilo depending on brand and quality, will cost between £910 and £1,820, or between 25 and 50 times the £36 cost of petrol for the journey.“
So now you know why coffee beans don’t make the list with alternative fuels.
Via: Daily Mail / BBC1
