This morning we toured ICAFE, and it has been one of my favorite tours so far. We got to take a closer look at the engineering behind why the Costa Rican coffee business is so successful. One engineering aspect that I found intriguing at ICAFE was their use of propane to heat their roasters because propane makes it easy to control the temperatures. Compared to other fuels, propane is clean- burning and emits virtually no air pollutants. ICAFE has also recently experimented with using ethanol for their roasters, which they said has worked very well so far. They also mentioned that at other coffee mills, they use the gas that comes from biomass because it heats up more easily and is thus more efficient.

Another machine that I found very interesting is the one used to identify the coffee species that ICAFE receives. This machine uses a process called inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) to determine the levels of each element within the coffee sample. In this process, plasma is used to heat the samples to 10,000 degrees. At this temperature, each element will emit a certain wavelength that is unique to itself. Then, the machine measures the intensity of each specific wavelength to determine the concentration of each element within the coffee. For instance, if the wavelength specific to Calcium has a higher intensity than that of Sodium, then there is a higher concentration of Calcium in the coffee.

ICAFE helps coffee farms across the country. For instance, coffee farmers can send samples of their coffee to ICAFE, and ICAFE can determine when is the best time of year to use fertilizers on that specific species. Additionally, ICAFE reproduces natural fungus that allows farmers to control disease better amongst their crops. This can be incredibly useful for small farmers especially, who may not have as much leeway for bad crops. On the other hand, some bigger coffee farms may not want to use ICAFE because they charge a tax for testing the coffee. Additionally, since all exports must be tested by ICAFE, this may be frustrating to larger companies that export a lot of coffee, as they will have to pay more.