kool i would like to smeal the egsaghst pipe form a car running on it (just kidding i know it would smell like coffie but it still is cool oh r they just going to try to get the coffie grounds from coffie shops like starbucks and other smaller chains or mabey will they have like a coffie exstange program where u can donate your old ciffie grounds at your loacal store like u can old cell phones?

While it's interesting to note that all the coffee grounds in the world could create 8 million barrels annually, it is an utterly useless fact. The act of collecting the coffee grounds which are practically evenly spread out over the entire surface of the earth would probably use just as much fuel as it creates. How could you possibly create a viable collection scheme?

We should start collections now. Can I simply drop my used grounds at Starbuck's?

@Redshirt: That's the trick, however, as opposed to the current biofuel scheme, which creates the unintended side effect of farmers converting their crops to corn, driving other food prices up, this theory uses an existing crop's chaff, in a new and exciting way.

A viable collection scheme could be somewhat simple providing a few key factors, besides the obvious one of "does it work?"

The city and state would HAVE to impose very few regulations. It's an experimental energy source, let them experiment!

Another factor would be that collection would need to be in a major metro area. Garbage is expensive and major restaurants or fast food places would love to cut down on waste by giving up their used coffee grounds.

The final factor would be the collection method itself. I suggest getting a few diesel cars (about 3 should do it) and use coffee to power them. If you ask the restaurants to store their used grounds to be collected every few days, 3 cars could virtually cover a metro area.

The answer to a good collection scheme is to work local, like the garbage company.

PS

Using more energy than it creates would obviously make an energy company fail.

My solution of 3 cars for every metro area would definately make it not fail. Lets just take the US for example and pretend there are 10 major metro areas in each state (that's a big highball number)

That would be 150 cars collecting coffee grounds. If each go 20000 miles a year (a fairly highball number) and get 10mpg (A big lowball number), it would be 300,000 gallons of biodiesel used yearly.

A barrel is the equivalent of 19.6 gallons. That would mean 15307 barrels would be used in the collection. We'll round that to 20.

20000 barrels is one quarter of ONE percent of the possible benefits of collecting coffee biodiesel. (8 million barrels).
I'd say that's a pretty decent recipe for producing more energy than it costs. True I haven't factored in electricty and whatever but hey, run diesel generators powered by coffee.

If there is a will, there is a way and we just need to be able to be allowed to do it.

Grounds collection wouldn't need so many extra cars! The company who delivers the coffee & maintains the machines can pick up the grounds on their regular delivery route. Most hotels & restaurants (ie high volume customers) get their coffee this way. Those distributors probably already have a transportation network/schedule in place to transport the grounds even further.

Like everything the retrieval of the coffee grounds in a cost effective manner will be the tricky part to making this economically viable.

Maybe that's where the office coffee services will play a role.

There is very little organic material lost when you extract a cup of coffee. 1 kg of coffee (around 100 cups) will yield not much less than 1kg of coffee grounds.