Chinese version of
咖啡渣，一點也不渣 @ https://vocus.cc/article/65f904b2fd89780001b7fde8 ;
咖啡渣為何不渣? 渣中寶貝成分 @ https://vocus.cc/article/65fa5722fd89780001a7da9f
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| Spent Coffee Grounds, Not a Waste at all |
According to the International Coffee Organization (ICO), world coffee consumption is expected to increase by 2.2% in 2023/24, reaching 177 million bags. Among them, Taiwan’s coffee consumption will increase by 8.7% in 2022/23 compared with the 2021/22 coffee year. There are hundreds of benefits of coffee. Drinking a cup of coffee can even work together to seal off COVID-19 for six hours.
What about spent coffee grounds (SCG), then?
Global coffee consumption produces millions of tons of waste spent coffee grounds every year, which can cause damage to wildlife and the environment. However, if we can recycle it properly, spent coffee grounds can be used not only as a general household cleaning helper to remove oil, deodorize and dehumidify, but also can be used to grow plants, feed animals, serve as raw materials for thermal power generation, or purify wastewater contaminated by heavy metals. . Various organic compounds in spent coffee grounds can also react with and deplete ozone, reducing indoor ozone concentration by 25% to 43%, and serve as a green adsorbent for the industrial dye Rhodamine B (RB).
A new study published in the Journal of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology once again proves that spent coffee grounds can be repurposed as a helper in removing environmental toxins, becoming a powerful adsorbent for bentazone.
Bentazidone is a herbicide commonly used in agriculture and is highly neurotoxic. In the study, the researchers found that when they used zinc chloride to activate the carbon in spent coffee grounds, the activated carbon showed 70 percent efficiency in removing benzophenone. Activated carbon is also effective in highly sensitive testing of contaminants in water. The researchers believe that the removal efficiency of bentazone using spent coffee grounds and using commercial activated carbon are very close, but reusing discarded waste spent coffee grounds is a better circular economy solution.
The precious ingredients of spent coffee grounds (SCG) include: 
ingredients of spent coffee grounds (SCG): click for english version
- organic matter: There are more than 1,000 kinds of organic substances, including minerals, lipids, proteins, peptides, free amino acids, and crude fibers (lignin, hemicellulose, and cellulose).
- biologically active substances: Bioactive substances are biologically active substances with antioxidant, antibacterial and anticancer activities, such as alkaloids (caffeine and trigonaline), diterpenes (caffeol and kaweol) and polyphenols (tannins, tocopherols) and anthocyanins).
- in growth medium: Higher levels of lutein, beta-carotene and chlorophyll were detected in cultured lettuce leaves when waste coffee grounds (up to 10%) were present in the growth medium.
- International Coffee Organization, COFFEE REPORT AND OUTLOOK, December 2023
- 王鈺雯, 咖啡渣的新用處, CASE報科學. 2016.12.21. https://case.ntu.edu.tw/blog/?p=26576
- Hsieh, P. F., & Wen, T. Y. (2020). Evaluation of ozone removal by spent coffee grounds. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 124.
- Vo, T. S., Hossain, M. M., & Kim, K. (2023). Natural bamboo powder and coffee ground as low-cost green adsorbents for the removal of rhodamine B and their recycling performance. Scientific Reports, 13(1), 21487.
- Rocha, B. C. D. S., Moraes, L. E. Z. D., Santo, D. E., Peron, A. P., Souza, D. C. D., Bona, E., & Junior, O. V. Removal Of Bentazone Using Activated Carbon From Spent Coffee Grounds. Journal of Chemical Technology & Biotechnology.
- Dimitrijević, S., Milić, M., Buntić, A., Dimitrijević-Branković, S., Filipović, V., Popović, V., & Salamon, I. (2024). Spent Coffee Grounds, Plant Growth Promoting Bacteria, and Medicinal Plant Waste: The Biofertilizing Effect of High-Value Compost. Sustainability, 16(4), 1632.
- Andrade, C., Perestrelo, R., & Câmara, J. S. (2022). Valorization of spent coffee grounds as a natural source of bioactive compounds for several industrial applications—A volatilomic approach. Foods, 11(12), 1731.