TURNING COFFEE INTO CONCRETE

Coffee
could soon be used to create concrete bricks for use in driveways, homes and
offices, thanks to a new project from RMIT University.

According to RMIT, Australia
drinks around 1.3 million cups of coffee a day, with the grind representing a
potentially untapped recycling material.

To reduce the amount of coffee
grinds going to landfill, an engineering lecturer and his students have looked
to the construction industry to find a solution.

The research team identified
concrete as a potential way of recycling the material, replacing up to 10 per
cent of the sand in a concrete mix with the coffee waste.

“Most concrete mixes contain up
to 80% sand – the third most used resource on the planet. But even this
seemingly endless resource cannot keep up with current demand, and extracting
it from places with fragile ecosystems can have a huge environmental impact,”
RMIT said in a statement.

The research team produced sample
coffee bricks, which aim to take advantage of the 156,000 kilograms of coffee
ground waste produced by the City of Melbourne’s 2600 cafes each month.

Bachelor of Engineering (Civil
and Infrastructure) (Honours) students Senura Kohombange and Anthony Abiad
worked with Senior Lecturer in the School of Engineering Dr Srikanth Venkatesan
on the project.

“It seems fitting then that we’re
working on this project in Melbourne, a city known for its great coffee
culture,” Kohombange said.

“We are very excited to present
the project, share the idea with others and showcase how some innovative
thinking can turn a waste product into an everyday construction material.”

Venkatesan said as a regular
cappuccino drinker he was inspired to find a solution to the waste he was
making each day.

“The biggest challenge is ensuring the addition of spent coffee grinds does not lead to a reduction in strength of concrete, and this is the focus of further testing and development to make this product viable for use in real-world applications,” he said.https://www.insideconstruction.com.au/index.php/2019/10/29/turning-coffee-into-concrete/