It’s not just aroma – British engineers built a car that runs entirely on coffee beans and broke the world speed record for a car powered by organic waste.
Earlier this month a modified Rover SD1 averaged 66.5mph at the Elvington Race Track near York, smashing the previous record of 47mph achieved by a U.S. team that built a car fuelled by wood pellets.
Engineer Martin Bacon, with the Teesdale Conservation Volunteers of Durham, stripped out the old car and refitted it with a ‘gasifier’ and filters, which turns waste coffee granules into energy to drive the engine.
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Caffeine powered: The modified Rover hit over 65mph, breaking the world record for a car run on waste material
Aromatic fuel: The car uses waste coffee beans, which would otherwise be thrown into landfill
The car is not the first to be powered by coffee, though.
Mr Bacon and his team based the design of the Rover on a coffee-powered Volkswagen Sirocco built for BBC’s science show Bang Goes The Theory.
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That car was driven from London to Manchester in March last year and straight into the Guinness Book of Records, as no car powered by waste material had ever travelled that distance before.
Clever science: The car burns coffee in a particular way and filters the gas before piping it into the cylinders
Bang Goes The Theory presenter Jem Stansfield explained that the cars demonstrate a genuine alternative to powering engines using fossil fuels.
They work, he says, by burning waste coffee granules, which would otherwise end up in landfill, in a very particular way.
He says: ‘It’s like an old charcoal burner. The coffee is heated up like charcoal.
‘Then the combustion gases, which are generally carbon dioxide and water vapour, are reduced by hot carbon to carbon monoxide and hydrogen.
‘This is then filtered by a cyclone filter and a rock wool filter and cooled down by a radiator.
‘By the end the gas is a lot cooler and cleaner and is piped through to the engine. The coffee gas, the carbon monoxide and hydrogen, goes in the cylinders and the explosion drives the engine.’
The car will be on show at Bang Live, in Manchester, as part of the city's science festival at Campfield Market Hall on October 22 and 23.