L is for LED inventors, Lumileds, Lend Lease/CLT, i Light Marina Bay & London

This year’s physics Nobel Laureates Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura are rewarded for having invented the blue light-emitting diode (LED). In the spirit of the Prize, which rewards an invention of greatest benefit to mankind, making the light bulb longer-lasting and more efficient. We also learnt about what Philips Lumileds is doing at its plant in Singapore – not only making energy efficient lights, but doing everything to save energy and water in the process. Lend Lease is still in the picture, not only supporting BCA in a drive for greater productivity in construction, but also advancing its CLT – Cross Laminated Timber – pilot to continue to show its sustainability commitment. Sustainable lighting and energy efficiency were the themes of this year’s i Light Marina Bay where SASA once again played a sustainability consulting role. London maintains its sustainability leadership in many ways, but how about making something of wasted coffee beans. Read More

Waste coffee grounds set to fuel London with

biodiesel and biomass pellets

Tim Smedley reports for Guardian Professional, (13 February 2014):

Sometimes an idea seems so good you can’t believe it hasn’t been done before. Using

waste coffee grounds to make biomass pellets and biodiesel occurred to Arthur Kay when he

was studying architecture at UCL in 2012. Tasked with looking at closed loop waste-to-energy

systems for buildings, he happened to choose a coffee shop. But when he discovered the oil

content in coffee and the sheer amount of waste produced – 200,000 tonnes a year in London

alone – he jacked in the architecture and set about forming a company called Bio-bean.

Kay is now one of 2014′s “London Leaders” – Boris Johnson’s scheme to promote green

entrepreneurship. He has been on Johnson’s radar since 2012.

“After working on this for a couple of weeks I entered the Mayor’s Low Carbon Prize and was

lucky enough to be among the winners”, says Kay. This gave him the impetus to take it forward

and team up with business partner Benjamin Harriman. They have since attracted over £100,000

in grants and funding. The idea is not to start small and grow bigger; it’s to start big.

“People think of us in a tiny little van or bicycle going round and collecting 10 kilos from each

coffee shop,” says Kay. “We are instead focusing on the [waste streams] of large-scale coffee producing factories in or around London. We’re currently in conversation with a couple of major

coffee shop chains too, who are really interested. Our processing plant isn’t operational yet but

we’re looking at a six to eight-month timeframe to set up a large-scale waste-processing site in

Edmonton, North London, capable of processing 30,000 tonnes a year.”

The technology Bio-bean is using to do this is a mixture of old and new. “Imagine you have a pile

of coffee grounds,” says Kay. “You dry them, then we have the patent for the bit in the middle

that allows us to extract oil from it. It’s a biochemical process, a solvent that you evaporate

through what’s called ‘hexane extraction’. By weight it is about 15-20% oil. The remaining 80-

85% is then turned into bio-mass pellets used to be burned in boilers.” The solvent is also 99.9%

recyclable, meaning it can be used over and over.

While first-generation biofuels have faced criticism for competing with food crops, secondgeneration

biofuels made from residual waste have come of age. McDonald’s now powers some

of its vehicles with its waste cooking oil. However, while cooking oil has to go through costly

filtering processes, coffee is a pure waste stream, and a growing one thanks to our insatiable

caffeine habit.

“We see this as the next step in creating a sustainable supply chain,” says Kay. “People have

concentrated a lot on the first stage of the supply chain, the Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance

movements to ethically source coffee. But then as soon as someone drinks it it’s seen as the end

of it – we’re saying the next step of sustainability is to close the loop and ethically dispose of it,

and creating something really valuable from it.”

The main market for the fuel is London’s transport system – the prospect of a “Bio-bean bus” is

not far-fetched given some London buses already run on biodiesel. Major coffee companies and

high street chains have expressed interest – fuelling their fleets or factories with waste coffee

would be a major PR boon.

Biomass pellets are another idea that has come of age. Biomass boilers for homes are supported

by the Green Deal and are becoming more common in factories and large public buildings. Yet,

says Kay, they mostly burn wood pellets shipped over from North America. Bio-bean’s initial tests

have found coffee pellets to produce 150% more energy than wood due to their higher calorie

content.

Coming from essentially free waste, Kay believes both the biodiesel and pellets can be produced

at 10% below market trading price. If it all sounds too good to be true, then it’s because there’s

nothing yet to show for it. “We’ve done a number of successful trials, have worked with a number

of waste producers and teamed up with all the relevant people – we’ve got interested investors,

good funding,” says Kay. “However, there is a big, big gap between concept and going into

production.”

The plan is to end the year with a major processing plant up and running inside the M25, using

coffee produced in London, drunk by Londoners, to power London’s buildings and transport. If it

happens, it won’t just be a good idea – it will be a great one.

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/waste-coffee-grounds-fuel-london