Direct biodiesel production from wet spent coffee grounds

Abstract

Utilization of waste spent coffee grounds (SCG) remains limited and requires pre-treatment before being discarded to avoid pollution to the environment. Lipids contained in SCG could be converted to biodiesel through an in situ transesterification method. Current in situ transesterification of wet SCG biomass, conducted at high reaction temperature to reduce the water effect and reduce reaction time, is energy intensive. A new approach, which combines simultaneous extraction-transesterification in a single step using soxhlet apparatus, was developed to produce biodiesel directly from wet SCG biomass. A homogeneous base catalyst at a concentration of 0.75 M showed better catalytic activity than acid, with hexane as a co-solvent on fatty acid (FA) extraction efficiency and FA to fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) conversion efficiency. Studying the factorial effect of ratio of methanol to hexane and reaction time led to the highest FA to FAME conversion efficiency of 97% at a ratio of 1 : 2 and 30 min reaction time. In addition, the catalyst could be used five times without losing its activity. In term of energy consumption, the reactive extraction soxhlet (RES) method could save 38–99% of energy compared to existing methods.