A foam filter made with used coffee grounds removes lead and mercury from contaminated water

Coffee is one of the most popular drinks in the U.S., which makes for a perky population — but it also creates a lot of used grounds, which could be useful not only when applied as fertilizer, used as a biodiesel source or mixed into animal feed.
Scientists now report in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering an innovative way to reduce this waste and help address another environmental problem. They have incorporated spent coffee grounds in a foam filter that can remove harmful lead and mercury from water.
The researchers fixed spent coffee powder in a bioelastomeric foam, which acted as a filter. In still water, the foam removed up to 99 percent of lead and mercury ions from water over 30 hours. In a more practical test in which lead-contaminated water flowed through the foam, it scrubbed the water of up to 67 percent of the lead ions. Because the coffee is immobilized, it is easy to handle and discard after use without any additional steps, the researchers say.

https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/...oam-removes-lead-from-contaminated-water.html

 

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Does this mean that coffee made by drip filtering has been significantly cleaned of the lead and mercury in the water it was made from?

 

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