Volker Sick was recently interviewed by Benoît Morenne of the Wall Street Journal about the future of captured CO2
“Consumers will need reassurance that some of these new products are safe, says Volker Sick, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan and director of the Global CO2 Initiative, a research group that seeks to make carbon capture and use mainstream. “This is somewhat of a problem—not that we haven’t done this on a large scale with many industries over the centuries, but because we have to do it really fast,” he says.”
Vodka Made From CO2? Entrepreneurs Find Surprising Uses for Captured Carbon
Once carbon is captured, what do you do with it?
Now, much of that captured carbon is used in the extraction of oil. But other creative uses are emerging, from the wacky to the more serious.
Consumers will need reassurance that some of these new products are safe, says Volker Sick, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan and director of the Global CO2 Initiative, a research group that seeks to make carbon capture and use mainstream. “This is somewhat of a problem—not that we haven’t done this on a large scale with many industries over the centuries, but because we have to do it really fast,” he says.
Here are some of the latest efforts to make use of captured carbon.
CO2 on the Rocks
Cocktail drinkers can now sip vodka made from carbon dioxide.
Air Company, a Brooklyn-based startup, uses photosynthesis-inspired technology to create vodka distilled from CO2-derived products. It first creates hydrogen from water using a process known as electrolysis, before feeding it into a reactor alongside CO2 captured from ethanol plants in the Northeast, the company says. The gases then go over a catalyst, says Stafford Sheehan, the company’s co-founder and chief technology officer. The resulting mixture of ethanol and water is distilled into vodka, Dr. Sheehan says. The company estimates that producing one liter of vodka takes a pound of CO2 out of the air.
The liquor, marketed as Air Vodka, comes in 750 ml bottles and retails for around $65. Air Company uses a similar technique to make hand sanitizer and, starting this spring, a fragrance. These products are a stepping stone towards building more complex products such as jet fuel, Dr. Sheehan says. “We’re not sitting here cranking out vodka for the sake of cranking out vodka.”