Biodiesel from Coffee OilLast updated 6-12-07 <-Biodiesel Home Page

Producing biodiesel from coffee oil

Drying Coffee: Here you can see about one and half buckets of coffee
grounds being sun dried. It took about one day. If spread thinner, a
couple of hours would have been enough.
Test Sample Used: 50 grams of coffee grounds were put into a glass
extraction thimble. The goal is to find what percentage (by weight) of the
coffee grounds is coffee oil.
Soxhlet Extraction Apparatus with Recovery Distillation Accessory: The
tall part of the left is for the extraction of the coffee oil from the
coffee grounds. The tube and flask on the right is for recovery of the
hexane solvent that will be used to extract (dissolve) the coffee oil from
the coffee grounds.
Soxhlet Extraction Apparatus: This is the apparatus that extracts the
coffee oil from the coffee grounds. Liquid hexane (a 6 carbon chain
similar to gasoline) is boiled in the bottom flask. Hexane vapor travels
up and through the side arm. It condenses back to liquid in the cool
condenser at the top. Liquid hexane drips down on a container full of
coffee grounds. The hexane dissolves the coffee oil. Once the contaner is
full of hexane, a small glass tube on the left automatically siphons out
the hexane with the dissolved coffee oil. That goes back into the bottom
flask. The process repeats as more hexane vapor condenses and washes the
coffee grounds. This setup allows the hexane to extract the coffee oil
several times. It's efficient and uses the least amount of hexane to do
the job.
Coffee Grounds Weighed: This is the extraction thimble. 50 grams of coffee
grounds were placed in the thimble. The thimble was lowered into the top
of the soxhlet extraction glassware.
Boil the hexane: The hot plate is turned up and the hexane starts to boil.
It has a boiling point of 69°C (156°F).
Hexane liquid drips on coffee grounds: The vapor travels up the side glass
tube and condenses on the cold condenser. It drips down on the coffee
grounds and fills the thimble with hexane. Below the thimble you can see
the coffee colored liquid. That is a mixture of hexane and coffee oil.
Once the hexane/coffee oil mixture fills up to the top of a small glass
side tube, the mixture will siphon down into the large bottom flask.
Coffee oil in flask: As the hexane/coffee oil mixture siphons into the
bottom flask, you see that it goes from clear to a light coffee color.
Each time the thimble fills with hexane and siphons out, the liquid in the
flask gets a little darker.
Coffee oil in flask: Here is another picture of the setup. Notice the
coffee colored liquid below the thimble. That indicates that coffee oil is
being extracted.
Extract become clear: Each time the thimble fills with hexane, the
hexane/coffee oil mixture gets lighter because less and less coffee oil is
left. I let it fill 5 times. It took about 10 minutes for the hexane to
fill the thimble each time. Here the hexane/coffee oil mixture is quite
light meaning most of the coffee oil has been extracted.
Separate hexane from coffee oil and recover the hexane: Now that all of
the coffee oil is extracted and in the hexane in the bottom flask, the
 task is to distill off the hexane leaving just the coffee oil. The side
arm is used for that. The tube held by the orange clamps is another
condenser. Cold water runs through it. It will condense the hexane vapor
allowing the liquid to run down hill to another flask on the right.
A partial vacuum speeds up the collection of hexane: In this picture, you
can see I added a flask and pump that creates a partial vacuum. This
allows the hexane to boil at a lower temperature and quicker. Ice
surrounds the round collection flask to prevent the hexane liquid from
evaporating too easily. About 80% of the hexane was recovered. To be
economical, the hexane recovery has to be much better. Actually, I
realized later that a lot of hexane was held by the coffee grounds that I
let air-dry. If that hexane was reclaimed, I think there would have been
95% hexane recovery.
Coffee Oil: After the hexane is boiled away, all that is left is coffee
oil. There's not much oil because there were only 50 grams of coffee
grounds used.
Pure Coffee Oil: I collected about 22 mL of coffee oil; however, there was
still some hexane left. The next day the beaker had 12 mL of coffee oil. I
figure after all hexane has evaporated, there will be about 6 mL of pure
coffee oil left.
Before and After: The coffee grounds on the left were what the grounds
looked like before the extraction. The coffee grounds on the right are
after the coffee oil had been extracted. Note that those are quite a bit
lighter. The ground weighed 45.4 grams after the coffee oil was extracted.
It weighed 50 grams before. So that's 4.6 grams of coffee oil that was
extracted. So the coffee oil is 4.6/50 (9.2%) of the weight of the coffee
grounds.
Below is the next setup I will test. It will allow about 3 pounds of
coffee ground to be extracted at a time. It will require more hexane
solvent than the soxhlet extractor used above, but if nearly all hexane is
recovered, that's not an big issue. The below apparatus is also designed
to recover the hexane that is left in the coffee grounds after that last
soaking with hexane. I found out that about 75% of the hexane needed to
cover the grounds does not drain out but stays bound to the coffee
grounds. So a second distillation of hexane will be done after the coffee
oil is extracted.
For questions or comments, contact me, Ken Costello, at
costello@chemistryland.com

Since May 29, 2006