Coca-Cola HBC, the subsidiary of major bottling firm Coca Cola Hellenic Bottling Company, will use a CO2 removal solution created by Swiss technology provider Climeworks.

The beverage industry is one of the world’s largest user of CO2 feedstocks, using 10 million tonnes of CO2 per year, and is therefore well-placed to benefit from filter-based CO2 capture, Climeworks insists.

Climeworks’ co-founder and CEO Christoph Gebal saidd: “We are very happy to be entering the beverage market together with Coca-Cola HBC. During the last years, Coca-Cola HBC has been an exceptionally supportive partner and invaluable in moving the application of DAC in the beverage industry forward – something we are very thankful for.”

In order to guarantee the highest purity standards required for using CO2 in beverages, Climeworks works with Pentair Union Engineering, a world leader in purification and liquefaction of high-quality CO2. The two companies have worked together since 2016 through an EU-funded project-  to develop a containerised product providing beverage-grade CO2 from Climeworks air-captured CO2.

Capturing carbon

Earlier this year, energy group Drax announced entered talks with the British Beer & Pub Association to explore whether the CO2 captured during its bioenergy carbon capture and storage (BECCS) project could be used to tackle CO2 shortages in the beverage industry.

The talks between Drax and the British Beer & Pub Association came as a response to the major CO2 distribution problems across the UK and mainland Europe this summer. At least five major European CO2 producers, which sell the gas to drinks manufacturers, went offline for maintenance.

CCS is the most cost-effective way of meeting climate change targets and needs to be deployed sooner rather than later, according to the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI). The organisation has previously highlighted that the UK has “more than enough” potential CCS sites to meet legally binding 2050 carbon targets in a cost-effective manner, which apparently could save up to £2bn annually throughout the 2020s.

George Ogleby

Comments (6)

  1. Iain Whyte says:

    What a great idea. I’m surprised that the EU has not mandated that only CCS sourced CO2 can be used in drinks and other commercial uses e.g. fire extinguisher production and welding gases.

  2. Vicki NIkolaidis says:

    Carbon capture is an interesting choice and that is fine, but the worst part of the process is the depletion of groundwater resources that belong to communities.

  3. Richard Phillips says:

    Just take a look at the Climeworks website, the plant required for this process, hundreds if not thousands of tons of steel, banks of electric fans, reprocessing of adsorbents, all to process air with 0.04% CO2. The quoted tonnage of CO2 obtained is small, in the thousands.

    Plants working on flue gases are still uneconomic, this, working on marginal concentrations must be highly uneconomic.

    It has long been axiomatic in the field of technology, that the foundation science of any proposed scheme of work has to be demonstrably true, and that the ensuing engineering has to produce an economically viable process.

    I can believe that politicians or scientifically naïve businessmen, sensing profits from the public purse, may be enthusiastic. But not me

    Richard Phillips

  4. Colin Matthews says:

    Think you are all missing the elephant in the room! This is not carbon capture and storage this is carbon capture and reuse. As soon as the drink is opened the Carbon dioxide is released back to atmosphere and that which is consumed comes out to atmosphere when the person drinking it Belches or burps. This is purely a temporary reassignment of Carbon dioxide no reduction in atmospheric levels, then there is the energy required to make it in the first place which adds to C02 etc….

  5. Richard Phillips says:

    Agreed, Colin, so what is the point of all this??

    It surely cannot be economic to construct this elaborate equipment just to re-use CO2, it will take forever to just to offset the plant construction, as you say.

    Richard Phillips

  6. Lisa Williams says:

    Interesting. As long as people drink Coca Cola then co2 will be released so although this process is only borrowing it from the atmosphere at least it is not adding it. And producing it on site without transport issues rather than in a plant from methane or even from flue gas at thermal energy plant has to be a plus. I guess if the economics didn t stack up then Coca Cola bottlers would not even consider it. Slightly dodgier environmentally if the energy from the process is from a co2 dirty source but Iceland and Switzerland are clean so all good.

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