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The proper question is to compare the long-term costs of dumping all those coffee grounds into long-term residence in a landfill versus the costs of first extracting and selling off oil so as to get a return of more than the nothing at all that results from Option-A.
Cost of disposing of coffee grounds? Essentially zero--> You gotta pay for your scavenger service whether you drink coffee or not. Your coffee grounds take up next to nothing in your garbage bag. Even commercial coffee bars need to pay for a dumpster for other refuse; the grounds are a minor component by volume, which is what you pay for.
These guys estimate 100 yrs of trash in American landfills (even allowing for population growth) would take up only 500 sq miles if piled 200 ft deep. The US is comprised of 3.8 x 10^6 sq mi. Landfills, then, after a whole century and not allowing for reclamation, which has already given us a great many improved parks, recreation sites and restored natural areas, would take up only 5 x 10^2 ./. 3.8 x 10^6 = 7.6 x 10^-5 or 0.0076% of our total land area.
How much of that is coffee grounds?
Jacqueg had it right earlier...coffee grounds are a great fertilizer and should be used re-purposed for that, not some hair-brained scheme to burn them.
[BTW- if we really want to continue using combustion engines, why not just convert to the old Andy Granatelli turbine engine? If you can light it on fire, you can use it to fuel a turbine. And no need to convert, at any economic or energy cost, one material into another for fuel.]
I have to wonder how it smells. It sounds like it takes a lot of energy to gather and process the used coffee grounds even if the fuel works well is there really any savings at the end.
Yes-
When I saw the story those were my thoughts--
Instead of diesel were other drivers being treated to dark roast fumes
And how much energy did it cost to produce that "new" fuel
When bio fuels were still uncommon--Daryl Hanna had an El Camino whose engine was configured to run on restaurant grease--
Just drove to several different places in her area and pick up the grease--required little prep from what I understood--so was positive uptick
Stinky but ecologically efficient
According to this report, SC restaurants produce about 10^7 gal of grease per yr, or 3 x 10^5 ba/y = about 800 barrels per day.
US petroleum consumption is 2 x 10^7 ba/d.... let's approximate that SC uses 1/50th of that... 4 x 10^5 ba/d
So.. 2 x 10^2 ./. 4 x 10^5 = 5 x 10^-4 or 0.0005% of fuel consumption from re-used grease.
BTW-- restaurant grease is already collected by renderers who then re-sell it for industrial use. It doesn't wind up in the landfills. Even if it did, it's organic and would quickly be re-cycled naturally, as would be the coffee grounds mentioned in the OP.
Well, that's a waste of really good composting material.
A biodiesel running on used cooking oil smells of french fries, so maybe biodiesel from grounds will smell like coffee. Could drive coffee consumption up? Since nothing triggers a coffee jones like the smell of fresh coffee.
I'm thinking it probably smells more like scorched coffee that boiled down to empty in the coffee pot and ruined the pot.
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