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 US team that built a car fuelled by wood pellets。
Engineer Martin Bacon, with 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。
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。
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。
Bang Goes The Theory presenter Jem Stansfield explained that the cars demonstrate a genuine alternative to powering engines using fossil fuels。
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."