In school, teachers always say, “Think out of the box”. Here’s a classic example. Will those teachers be happy? We really do not know. The BBC1 show “Bang Goes the Theory” told viewers that alternative fuels can be used to power vehicles. An average person would think “Wow!” and hope that somebody works on it. Now, someone has really thought out of the box and has come up with something innovative.

Few years from now, there may be a scarcity of coffee beans. Coffee lovers beware! Something very bizarre has been tried with your favorite coffee beans. The beans that brought you hot coffee every morning are running someone’s car somewhere near London.
A while ago it came to light that coffee-based biofuels were promising, and now, someone has built a car running on coffee beans. Yes, cappuccino has now become Carpuccino. Shortly, the Carpuccino, a 1988 Volkswagen Scirocco, will be seen driving around 340 km between Manchester and London. Are you happy?

The car will eat 68 kilogram of your coffee beans for the trip. Just imagine! Coffee beans wasted this way! 1 kg of the beans will be ground to push the car ahead by 4.5 km. How many cups of cappuccino would you have sipped in instead? The Carpuccino can speed up to a maximum of 96 km per hour. There is a drawback though. The coffee filter has to be cleaned, right? The Volkswagen will have to stop at every 100th kilometre to clean out the filter.

Want more info on the new concept? Let’s go to the industrial chemistry of the car. Coffee granules are put into a gas cylinder and heated to 700 degree Celsius in a charcoal fire. This heat will break down the coffee beans into hydrogen and carbon monoxide. This gas gets fed into radiator-type pipes where it relaxes and cools down a little. The relaxed gas, now, is put to task once again. It is fed into two filters inside the car trunk. The first cyclone filter will spin out all solid matter. The second, a loft-insulation cylinder, will block hot tar from getting inside the engine. After suffering the clean bath, the front grille and engine feast on the coffee gas. It burns the car’s tummy, i.e., the engine, and the car moves. Got it?The concept seems wonderful. But is it really feasible? The Carpuccino’s trip will cost up to 50 times as much as it would if it were running on gas. However, if it works out just fine, think of the plight of the poor children who will have an additional chapter in their chemistry syllabus, “The Functioning of a Coffee-Powered Car Engine”. Just think of the millions of coffee addicts in India. They will have to think twice. Coffee for the tummy or coffee for the car? As the husband leaves for work, the wife says, “Don’t forget the coffee beans on your way back”. The man will ask, “Coffee for the house or coffee for our car?” Coffee on the drive, anyone?