How about "Carbon Capture" Beer!

Industry Discussions Renewable Energy
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Finally, a use for Carbon Capture tech that I can really relate to: CHARLTON (CBS) – Each time you crack a beer, you probably aren’t thinking about climate change or saving the planet. The Tree House Brewing Company is doing just that.

Nate Lanier, co-founder and CEO of Tree House, told WBZ-TV the decision to install carbon capture technology at their Charlton facility was “literally a no-brainer”.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/tree-house-brewing-company…

Barkeep give me a tall and frosty. :wink:

OTFoolish

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Yes, fermentation produces carbon dioxide. Cleanly and easy to capture.

Ethanol production for gasoline also produces carbon dioxide.

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Yes, fermentation produces carbon dioxide. Cleanly and easy to capture.
Ethanol production for gasoline also produces carbon dioxide.

Fifteen years ago, I took a trip to visit family in Iowa. During my stay, we took a short car ride out to the new ethanol plant that was recently built outside of town. I noticed two or three dry ice trucks backed up to the plant. They were obviously capturing the CO2 from the ethanol fermentation, and chilling it down to dry ice for easy transportation. I assumed they then trucked the dry ice over to the Coca-Cola bottling plant that is located a few towns away. The CO2 puts the fizz in the Coke or Dr Pepper or whatever they are bottling that day. Its an efficient use of a byproduct from the ethanol production process, but it doesn’t save the CO2 from eventual release back into the air.

I guess you could say the CO2 was only recently in the air anyway, captured by the growing corn field that was eventually turned into ethanol. So in that respect, it is fairly carbon-neutral.

  • Pete
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I got a tour of Poet’s new ethanol plant in Laddonia, MO when it opened a few years ago.

Asked about the carbon dioxide, they said they did not capture it at that stage as they had not found a market for it.

You wonder if that has changed.

Commercial Solvents Corporation in Terre Haute, IN was founded during World War I to make fermentation acetone by the Weitzman process. They also made butanol and ethanol in the same process. They collected their carbon dioxide and sold it as dry ice.

Weitzman was knighted for his contribution to the British war effort. He was a zionist and supported the Balfour Declaration that resulted in the creation of Israel. He served as Israel’s first president.

The allies bought up a whiskey distillery at a good price going into the prohibition era and converted it to run the Weitzman process. But the war was over by the time it was ready to run. The allies sold it to stockholders. They ran the Weitzman process until 1964.

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