Chemist launches carbon-negative vodka company

There’s a new way to combat climate change, but only New Yorkers over 21 can partake. Brooklyn-based Air Co., a company started by C&EN Talented 12 alum Staff Sheehan, has launched vodka made from captured CO₂.

Vodka is traditionally made by fermenting grains or other plant sources of carbohydrates or sugars—a process that emits CO₂. In contrast, Air Co. consumes CO₂ that a supplier captures from other companies’ fermentation processes.

To produce ethanol for its vodka, Sheehan’s team first makes hydrogen by splitting water. The hydrogen and two CO₂ molecules are then combined using a proprietary catalyst.

Sheehan has been working with CO₂ catalysts since his grad student days at Yale University, so it’s no surprise a secret catalyst is at the heart of the new company. Still, the booze business is a change of pace for the chemist. He earlier founded Catalytic Innovations to make chemicals from CO₂, water, and solar energy in an electrochemical cell.

“Our little prototype could make a bottle’s worth of ethanol in like three weeks,” Sheehan tells C&EN. And purifying the ethanol required a lot of energy. In 2018, Sheehan and Air Co. co-founder Gregory Constantine decided instead to explore hydrogenation to make vodka.

The Air Co. system produces a 10-20% ethanol/water solution, which the firm distills at its Brooklyn site to higher ethanol concentration. Its 40% alcohol vodka won gold at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition this year.

To ensure the cocktail mainstay reaches customers in a carbon-negative state, it will be distributed only in New York City.