This Vodka Helps Fight Climate Change

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July 23, 2021

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(CNN) Vodka is usually made from fermented grains, like rye. But Air Company's spirit is made out of captured carbon dioxide emissions. READ MORE/WATCH VIDEO

From CO2 To Vodka: Air Company Launches World’s First Carbon-Negative Spirit (Forbes)

This carbon-negative vodka comes from captured CO2 -- Air Company—a winner of Fast Company’s 2021 World Changing Ideas Awards—pulls its vodka from the air. (Fast Company)

The newest product made from captured CO2 is explosive -- As private space starts booming, the footprint of the industry could become massive. Making the rocket fuel from CO2 could help. (Fast Company)

This carbon-negative perfume is made from captured CO2 (Fast Company)

Your Next Bottle of Vodka Could Be Made From Captured Carbon:Climate-conscious shoppers can now buy hand sanitizer, perfume and a host of other products made from waste carbon dioxide (Bloomberg)

TECHNOLOGY: We turn Air into Air Eau de Parfum Air Spray Hand Sanitizer Sugar (Air Company)

Excerpt from Fast Company: Through a patented process based on the same principles as photosynthesis in a plant, the company uses renewable energy to convert carbon from the air into ethanol. Sheehan, who has spent years working on CO2 conversion technology, ended up making vodka somewhat by accident. The tech he had developed happened to make ethanol, and that ethanol happens to be particularly well suited for making a drink. “We ended up targeting premium spirits because the ethanol that we were making was really, really high purity, and the place where you can recognize the benefits of that really high purity is in a really premium vodka,” he says. His cofounder, CEO Greg Constantine, also had a background in the industry. Now the company takes CO2 from factories (often alcohol production) and uses it to make its ethanol. A typical bottle of vodka might produce 13 pounds of greenhouse gases, but Air Company’s new vodka has no footprint; it’s actually carbon negative, helping take an extra pound of CO2 out of the air for each bottle produced.

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In a partnership with NASA, Air Company is also studying how ethanol from CO2 can be turned into glucose, which could then be used for food in space. (Glucose can be used directly as an ingredient, or used as food for microbes, which can then produce things like lab-grown meat.) It’s also working with partners on a renewable rocket fuel that can be made from air, solar power, and water. “The goal is to really showcase that you can turn carbon dioxide into a variety of things that are all potentially better than their predecessors,” says Constantine. READ MORE

Excerpt from Fast Company: By making liquid methane—the fuel used by new rockets such as the Starship—from captured CO2 instead of natural gas, the net carbon footprint of each flight will be eliminated. The fuel also solves a second challenge: Assuming reusable rockets make it to Mars, they’ll need to refuel for the flight home, and the fuel could be made using materials found on the planet. “[On] Mars, you have water,” Sheehan says. “It’s frozen, but you can unfreeze it, if you have enough energy to do that, and you do have energy in the form of solar energy. And you have an abundance of carbon dioxide, because the atmosphere is 95% CO2.”

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The company built a prototype that successfully created liquid methane and liquid oxygen. “We’ve made it and we’ve really studied in-depth how it works,” he says. “We’re taking that knowledge that we gather from our first facility, and then designing a strong pathway forward in how it scales up for use on Mars as well.”The next steps will be designing and building a refueling station, and beginning to work closely with the space industry. “We need the industry to come along with us,” he says. “While we’ve won some funding from NASA in the past, and we’re hoping to do some more, we really want to have those key industry players and partners, like the SpaceX and Blue Origin of the world, to really help push these technologies forward as well.” READ MORE

Excerpt from Fast Company: At its factory in Brooklyn, the startup uses CO2 captured from nearby facilities that produce ethanol traditionally, and then combines it with hydrogen that it makes from electrolysis, a process that splits the oxygen and hydrogen in water. Everything in the process runs on renewable electricity. The company’s proprietary technology, which mimics photosynthesis, creates ethanol, which can be used to make alcohol, perfume, or other products, and water that’s recycled back into its hydrogen production. Air Eau de Parfum, formulated and blended at New York-based Joya Studio, has notes of fig leaf, orange peel, jasmine, violet, powdery musk, and tobacco. The company also chose to use synthetic scents because they have less environmental impact in production.

The new eau de parfum will be produced in a limited edition, but the startup wants to use it to demonstrate to larger companies what’s possible. “What we’re able to create is a great proof of concept, but where we’re able to have real impact on CO2 reduction, from an emissions reduction point of view, is when we’re able to then implement it into big business and into their pipelines as well,” Constantine says. Some fragrance companies are already moving toward alternatives, like Coty, which now works with a startup called LanzaTech to make ethanol for its fragrances from emissions captured at industrial plants.

In the case of perfume, there’s one catch: Although the products shrink climate pollution, the scents themselves do still contribute to local air pollution. One recent NOAA study in New York City found that fragrant personal care products, which emit volatile organic compounds or VOCs, are responsible for a surprisingly large portion of the city’s ozone pollution. READ MORE