The First House Powered by Coffee

Since 2006, Dunkin’ Donuts has used the tagline “Amer­i­ca Runs on Dunkin’,” pre­sum­ably allud­ing to the cof­fee and donuts that get mil­lions of Amer­i­cans through each morn­ing. But maybe, all along, they’ve had some­thing more in mind. Above, Dunkin’ presents a tiny home pow­ered by bio­fu­el made from spent cof­fee grounds, a process mas­ter­mind­ed by a com­pa­ny called Blue Mar­ble Bio­ma­te­ri­als. Work­ing with lux­u­ry tiny home­builder New Fron­tier Tiny Homes, they’ve cre­at­ed a process–notes a Dunkin’ press release–that works some­thing like this:

• Step 1: Extract excess oils in the spent cof­fee grounds. There can be nat­ur­al oils left in spent cof­fee grounds, all depend­ing on the cof­fee bean type and orig­i­nal pro­cess­ing meth­ods.
• Step 2: Mix and react. These oils are then mixed with an alco­hol to under­go a chem­i­cal reac­tion known as trans­es­ter­i­fi­ca­tion. This pro­duces biodiesel and glyc­erin as a byprod­uct.
• Step 3: Refine. The biodiesel is washed and refined to cre­ate the final prod­uct.

When all is said and done, 170 pounds of used cof­fee grounds trans­lates into one gal­lon of fuel. From 65,000 pounds of cof­fee grounds, you got enough juice to pow­er a 275 square foot home, at least for a while.

Take a 360 degree inter­ac­tive tour of the tiny home here.

via New Atlas

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Make the World’s Small­est Cup of Cof­fee, from Just One Cof­fee Bean

A Rol­lick­ing French Ani­ma­tion on the Per­ils of Drink­ing a Lit­tle Too Much Cof­fee

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

David Lynch Directs a Mini-Sea­son of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japan­ese Cof­fee Com­mer­cials

J.S. Bach’s Com­ic Opera, “The Cof­fee Can­ta­ta,” Sings the Prais­es of the Great Stim­u­lat­ing Drink (1735)

“The Virtues of Cof­fee” Explained in 1690 Ad: The Cure for Lethar­gy, Scurvy, Drop­sy, Gout & More