Succinic acid is a colorless, crystalline compound used in lacquers, dyes and perfumes and as an ingredient in many consumer products, such as packaging, which might otherwise be produced with fossil fuels, and medicines.
Lin's research effort emerged from a discussion last summer between her and the Climate Group, a nonprofit organization that works with corporations and governments to develop low-carbon technologies and economies. Starbucks Hong Kong is one of the organization's members, and representatives from the Climate Group asked Lin last summer if she could experiment with converting the coffee chain's waste. In addition to collecting its leftover bakery goods, Starbucks helped fund the research by contributing a portion of proceeds made from selling eco-friendly gift sets.
Coffee grounds into fertilizer
Starbucks Hong Kong produces nearly 5,000 tons of used coffee grounds and unconsumed bakery waste each year, which is currently incinerated, composted or dumped in landfills.
"At the moment, we process around 2 kilograms of bakery waste from Starbucks every week. The yield we obtain from pastry waste is a bit higher than cheesecake," said Lin. Each kilo of stale pastry yields 0.45 kilograms of succinic acid, while cheesecake offers 0.44 kilograms.
In addition to the garbage from Starbucks, Lin converted cafeteria waste from the City University of Hong Kong.
Coffee grounds, she said, have been found to inhibit enzyme growth during fermentation, so they are no longer included in the biorefining process. But, she added, a Hong Kong-based recycling organization has been using the grounds to fertilize organically grown mushrooms that are then sold to the city's Sheraton Hotel.
The next step, Lin said, is to construct a pilot-scale facility. She said one Hong Kong-based bakery supplier produces 1 ton of waste per day that is converted into fertilizer. She said her group's process could convert that amount of waste into commercially marketable succinic acid.
"At the moment, there are companies interested in the process," she said. "We carried out a technical-economic study in which we calculated the size of the facility as processing 1 ton to succinic acid."
Lin would not disclose which companies were involved in developing the pilot facility but stated, "one of the largest waste companies in Hong Kong and China is interested."
She estimates that an announcement might be made by September and construction of the biorefinery plant could take a year to complete.
Lin and her research group announced their findings today at the 244th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society under way in Philadelphia.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
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Add CommentLearn from Starbucks. Kill that stupid floating facetwit garbage because it's wasting my screen space, irritating my senses and starting to become a chronic pain in my neck.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. Anyone like that floater?
2. Anyone considering it a major and imbecile nuisance?
It annoys me too especially that it follows every time i read an extra sentence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey have learned from Starbucks. They are recycling what was once an empty margin to provide something that at least some people appear to be using. I have no intention of ever using it but I can't say that I find it particularly annoying or distracting. I certainly can't see why it seems to be causing so much angst for some people.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAngst? Why would I be afraid of the stupid thing? What it does is it p**s me off because that stupidity is wasting my screen space for nothing at all except for some nerds' idiotic belief in that overrated facebook thingie which is showing its true value on the stock market. Here I am trying to understand a scientific article and a bar containing a thumb and other icons and colours and signs keeps jumping up and down every time my display moves. If I scroll down it jumps down and then back and if I need to check a previous paragraph it jumps up again and if I need to find something and I scroll a few times up and time it jumps all over the place. It has all kinds of ugly and unpleasant side effects. You underestimate the neurovisual irritation and its quite substantial waste of neural energy that is subtracted from the energy you use to read and understand the article. That thing was fine where it was, under an article, where anyone believing in those links can use them. Other than that it's pure idiocy. And the longer it stays the more insulted I feel. Maybe you are less sensitive to it or you have tunnelvision but it drives me nuts. It starts to heavily affect the way I perceive SciAm. A major step towards supermarket stardom it may be, it's disgusting me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisand it's a cheat too as there is no button which says "dislike" or "scrap this article" or "bin it".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's one-sided, the social equivalent of a one-party, one leader rule: vote for this leader because that's all the choice you get.
and another thing: have you noticed how certain things that a PR manager would consider negatively affecting the image when an editorial or blogging piece of scientific cretinism drew flak have disappeared?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn short, the floater is expected to draw only "thumbs up" and everything that looks like criticism is removed. One rule, one leader, one party, one opinion.
SciAm is being revamped by spin graduates is what that means.
Which tells me that some idiot is attempting to redo the mag for "a larger market".
And we wonder why scientists lose credibility?
JC, internet advertising is here to stay. You get most of your content on the internet for FREE... companies make money selling advertising, they need to make money to function and provide your FREE content. If you want to get rid of ads, take out a subscription to SA!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI did not even notice the ad thingie until you made such an issue of it, and I'm sure most others missed it as well.