Cars of the Future Could Run on Viscous 'Coffee Oil'

To Cincinnati residents who've noticed people rooting around in Starbucks dumpsters, shoveling wet, smelly coffee grounds into buckets, don't worry – there's not a new breed of caffeine super-tweaker on the loose. It was just local researchers who are trying to achieve the extraordinary in coffee-based alchemy: transforming the stuff we drink in the morning into cheap, clean fuel to power our vehicles.

There is in fact a car that's been running for years on clumps of dried-out coffee. What environmental engineers at the University of Cincinnati are doing is a little different. They are extracting the oil from used-up coffee and then filtering it back through the grounds to remove impurities, in effect setting up a manufacturing process that uses every single part of the bean.