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Engineers Just Made Concrete 30% Stronger. The Secret Ingredient? Coffee. (www.popularmechanics.com)
submitted 3 years ago by [M] to c/science@beehaw.org
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[–] 35 points 3 years ago* (8 children)

A biochar of spent coffee grounds.

Not coffee grounds.

If you don’t know what biochar is, it’s high carbon material that’s left over after burning organic matter (think:wood) slowly under low-oxygen conditions.

Biochar requires energy and emitting gases.

It seems unfair to say that we’re saving on CO2 and methane from decomposition without also counting the cost of the biochar combustion.

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  • [–] [S] 13 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    It seems unfair to say that we’re saving on CO2 and methane from decomposition without also counting the cost of the biochar combustion.

    Biochar is still a pretty new concept, but results are promising as a potential overall carbon negative process.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

    I wish they had a bit about that in the article itself, but they did link another article about biochar creation and its byproducts. I linked it in another comment here.

    I feel there's a lot of assumptions here that no one actually reads articles.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

    Most of us are from reddit and unfortunately that "jump to the comments to argue" mentality seems to have followed a lot of us.

    For example, I haven't read the article. Just clicked into the comments to see what it was, found out it was coffee.

    I'll go read it now.

    I'm back, the other linked USDA article about pyrolysis is fascinating. It's not really clear on how much energy the process takes but they did mention it could (possibly) be self-sustaining. Really cool stuff!

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Is there a difference between biochar and charcoal? Because that description of biochar sounds like it's just charcoal.

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