Coffee by-product is an energy provider

Do you know that Nestlé Philippines’ Cagayan de Oro factory saves around 30,000 liters of fuel daily?

The answer lies in the boiler system which utilizes spent coffee grounds as fuel for the plant’s steam requirements.

Coffee by-products, otherwise known as spent coffee, are the remains of coffee solids after they have been roasted and grounded.

"As early as 1994, the factory had been using the concept of biomass disposal using the Lurgi Waste Heat Boiler System," reveals Rudy Trillanes, factory manager of the Cagayan de Oro factory and senior vice president of Nestlé Philippines, Inc. (NPI). "It uses coffee grounds, by-products after extracting coffee liquor from roasted coffee beans, as a fuel to generate steam."

Last October, to cope with the increasing volume of coffee production, NPI installed an additional boiler, the Atmospheric Fluidized Bed Boiler (AFBB).

"This new boiler technology has a higher capacity that can handle not only solid biomass from our coffee processes but also colored water concentrate and waste water treatment sludge," tells Trillanes.

On an average production day, Trillanes says they recycle and burn spent coffee grounds equivalent to 30,000 liters of bunker fuel.

Green coffee beans from 11 coffee buying stations of NPI are shipped to the Cagayan de Oro factory for cleaning and drying and for production process.

These are then roasted to achieve the desired taste, aroma, appearance and "mouth feel". The ground-roasted coffee is extracted with hot water inside the percolation batteries or extraction cells to produce the coffee extract or "coffee brew."

Next the coffee extract is ready for spray drying that will produce the 100 percent pure soluble coffee, which is popularly known as Nescafe Classic.

The spent coffee grounds, meanwhile, are sent to the biomass disposal system to be used as fuel for the boiler system. The heat produced from this process is then used to produce the steam requirements of the factory.

Trillanes says that their system of using solid waste as fuel totally eliminates the cost of waste disposal.

"And more importantly, by using biomass as substitute for bunker fuel, we prevent the adverse air emission pollution such as Sulfur Dioxide (Sox) and Nitrogen Oxide (NOx), which is a natural by-product of combustion of fossil fuels," Trillanes stresses."Thus, we comply with Clean Air Act or RA 8749."

By using biomass as alternative fuel, he concludes that spent coffee grounds help save landfill space. "And this complies with the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act or RA 9003."