Imagine how many pots of coffee are brewed each day and the incredible amounts of coffee grounds that are tossed in the trash. What if those coffee grounds could be used for methane carbon storage instead? Would that be the end of fl aring as we know it? That’s when you could use a good fortune teller to divine the future of carbon storage from reading coffee grounds, tea leaves or wine sediments.

Researchers at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) in South Korea have found a way to modify used coffee grounds into a carbon-capture material, according to an article in the September 2015 journal Nanotechnology from IOP Publishing. Of course, the researchers had to use the best coffee grounds—100% Colombian coffee, dark roast, fine ground—to devise a simple, inexpensive method for removing methane from the atmosphere.

The coffee grounds were steeped in a solution of potassium hydroxide, heated to 65 C (149 F) and stirred for 24 hours. The mixture was then dried.

This concoction was then dried in an oven at 100 C (212 F) before fi nally being subjected to temperatures of 700 C to 900 C (1,290 F to 1,650 F) in an argon-atmosphere furnace to activate its carbon-capture properties, according to the article.

This resulted in the production of a stable carbon-capture material in under a day, which the researchers claim is much quicker than the time taken for the production of other carbon-capture materials.

Christian Kemp, who was an original researcher on the work at the UNIST, said, “The waste material is free compared to all the metals and expensive organic chemicals needed in other processes—in my opinion this is a far easier way to go.”

It all started with Kemp staring at the coffee grounds in his cup. “We were sitting around drinking coffee and I looked at the coffee grounds and thought ‘I wonder if we can use this for methane storage?’”

After capturing and storing methane, the coffee grounds could then be used as a fuel. Now that’s a prediction the industry could use.

Another area where reading tea leaves isn’t always helpful is in exploration. Just ask operators about Arctic exploration offshore Alaska.

On Sept. 28 Royal Dutch Shell confi rmed the Burger J wildcat in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea was being plugged and abandoned.

After investing some $7 billion in Arctic exploration, Shell came up with some oil and gas shows but nothing that would warrant further exploration in the Burger prospect.

All that activity raises the specter of Mukluk 1 in the Beaufort Sea. This may sound familiar. The Mukluk well was plugged and abandoned by a BP-led consortium on Jan. 20, 1984. At that time, it was the most expensive dry hole ever drilled—$430 million. It was considered a low-risk development.

But, just like the Burger J, even the best looking seismic doesn’t always end up being low-risk. That’s still one of the basic tenets of the industry—a company doesn’t know what it has until it drills the well.

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