Many residents who walk along McGregor Road may not realise they are walking on not only regular concrete but “coffee concrete” – a site of innovation that is now nationally recognised.
Recently, RMIT University’s coffee biochar concrete won a prestigious Shaping Australia Award for its work on the Pakenham Roads Upgrade.
At the Shaping Australia Awards, the team’s outstanding work with coffee biochar and its applications in concrete has been recognised by the community, winning The Problem Solver award for 2024.
This work recognises groundbreaking research that has already transformed, or holds the potential to transform, the lives of Australians for the better.
The Shaping Australia Awards shine a spotlight on the impactful contributions universities make each day – shaping the nation’s future through teaching, research and community service.
Late last year, Major Road Projects Victoria worked with RMIT University and project contractor BildGroup to lay the first ever section of coffee biochar concrete along McGregor Road’s footpath.
For this project alone, five tonnes of spent coffee grounds – approximately 140,000 coffees worth of grounds – was converted into two tonnes of useable biochar, which has been laid into the 30 cubic metres of concrete used in the footpath.
Organic waste in landfill, including spent coffee grounds, contributes three per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. To overcome this challenge, the RMIT team developed a technique to convert spent coffee grounds into a coffee biochar made without oxygen and use this in concrete production.
Research conducted by RMIT indicates that the use of coffee biochar in concrete has the potential to increase the strength of concrete by up to 30%, reduce the amount of fine aggregate sand needed in a concrete mix. This innovation has the potential to result in a more ecologically friendly and economical alternative to traditional concrete mixes.
The Pakenham Roads Upgrade has completed major works on Stage 1 of the project, delivering new ramps and lanes on the Princes Freeway and a new bridge on Healesville-Kooweerup Road over the freeway. Works are underway on Stage 2 of the project to widen the McGregor Road citybound freeway entry ramp.
