Anotherpower.com Forum
Transportation => Fossil / Other Fuels => Topic started by: Norm on September 04, 2012, 10:06:34 am
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Now don't laugh.....seriously anybody ever sprinkle old dry
coffee grounds on red hot coals.....wouldn't the stuff be powdered
charcoal if you over roasted the stuff ?
Now Tom, Ghurd, and I could probably heat our homes about 1 day
out of the week from coffee grounds. :)
Norm.
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We turn ours into eggs or pork depending on who gets the kitchen scraps that day...
I have literally tons of firewood to process within sight of the house:
(http://pics.ww.com/d/446528-2/100_5078.JPG)
(http://pics.ww.com/d/446531-2/100_5079.JPG)
(http://pics.ww.com/d/446534-2/100_5080.JPG)
Those bigger logs are Black Oak and from 3 to 4.5 feet in diameter and 10 plus feet long. And, yes, I have a machine lined up to break them down into more easily handled chunks. A BobCat with a grapple and a bigger splitter than mine you see in the background. Might need to rent a long blade saw for the bigger ones over 4 feet diameter as my "big" saw is a 24" bar Stihl MS 240. The smaller logs are mostly walnut slash & culls from logging the walnuts last year. All spotted within 400 feet of the stoves.
But, yeah, enough grounds could be interesting to burn with some kind of dry fuel / air injection to get it to burn off hot and fast.
Tom
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The best part of warmin' up, is folgers in your stove...
Ugh, I tried. ::)
Interesting idea... But all kidding aside, would there be enough volume of the stuff to warrant designing a burner for them?
One things for sure - it would be a perky fire... :o
Steve
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I thought I remember someone making burnable coffee cartridges by mixing the grounds with just enough candle wax to hold it all together.
and it would smell nice burning too . . .
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I have made emergency road kits with a wax/cardboard to use as a heater.
This might actually be a pleasant idea to add. In fact I think I will even drop in some vaccum packed coffee into that kit, why not have some extra pleasures to keep you feeling human?
Pretty simple things, at least the basic design... I won't go into all the little things I have tried with them here..
Here in Northern Minnesota (aka frozen hell) it can easily be a downright life or death situation if your car breaks down in the winter.
I use a used can from soups or similar, and cut a piece of cardboard to roll into it, then fill it with wax. This give a hot flame that lasts quite a few hours, with plenty of heat to melt snow, and thaw/cook if needed.
I use these also in camping just to keep them in reasonably new condition.
Sure they may last a long time in normal storage, maybe forever, but they tend to melt a bit here and there in a car, get heard to lite etc, so I use them from time to time. It's also gives me an excuse to make the next generation to see how i can improve here and there and still keep it cheap.
I might try to find a way to mix in some dried coffee grounds, in a test, just to see if they would work without a lot of extra smoke.
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Interesting... Hadn't thought about the cartridge concept. I suppose tho that since coffee beans are primarily only stripped of their flavor and not the energy content, it might very well be viable. Add the wax and you've surely got a decent store of energy there.
This is why I hang around here... Never know when some seemingly off the wall concept at first glance could really be a useful thing to know at the very least.
Now if I only drank coffee... :-\
Steve
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watch some of the utube videos on the wood gasifier camp or back pack stoves. Coffee grounds should do well in one of those. one can be made by using a quart paint can (new) and a soup can( i think progresso ) that will fit inside the paint can from the bottom.
you cut the bottom out of the quart can and the end out of soup can and the soup can will fit in the ring where the top goes on the paint can.
They recommend drilling the holes before you cut the ends out. the paint can gets big holes at the bottom and the soup gets big holes at the bottom and twice as many little holes in the top.
We seen where a guy didnt drill the holes all the way around the paint can but double rowed then . he then has a wind break built in.
Isaiah