Partner Profile: Stafford Sheehan | |
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"Climate change is the biggest challenge we face, and carbon capture has a chance to contribute toward solving it."
This issue of the GCI newsletter features Stafford Sheehan, Chief Technology Officer at Air Company. Air Company is a technology, engineering and design company that transforms carbon dioxide into products like vodka and sanitizer. Stafford received his PhD from Yale University in 2016, studying chemical methods for artificial photosynthesis and related systems, and for the last five years has been developing industrial technology for CO2 utilization.
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How did the company start?
My co-founder Greg Constantine and I met in 2017 in Israel, where we were both invited to participate in a Forbes under 30 event at their global conference that takes place in Jerusalem. We had both been recently put on their 30 under 30 list for prior accomplishments in our careers. At the time, sustainable products by and large had a perception and reputation among consumers that suggested if you were buying something that's eco-friendly, you're compromising on quality. We wanted to turn that narrative around, but it would require both new sustainable technology that produces quantifiably higher quality products, and expertise in storytelling and communication to help businesses and consumers with largely nontechnical backgrounds understand how and why. We started Air Company to do both, and after years of development launched our first product: Air Vodka. Along the way, we got the attention of groups such as NASA and the United Nations, and now we're working to realize global-scale applications.
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What motivated you to focus on making products with captured CO2?
Climate change is the biggest challenge we face, and carbon capture has a chance to contribute toward solving it. Recently, the IPCC has gone as far as to say it's necessary. My cofounder and I have been life-long environmentalists and sustainability advocates, and wanted to contribute to fighting climate change on a grand scale. I'd say the same for all of our coworkers who have joined us at Air Company over the past several years. Personally, I've been studying technologies that accomplish artificial photosynthesis for just about all of my adult life. I started out by studying photoelectrochemical water splitting as an undergraduate, then water oxidation and fuel production (H2, CO2) electrocatalysis in graduate school for my PhD, thus my technical expertise is focused on transforming water and carbon dioxide into products. There was an element of serendipity in that the products I focus on making from CO2 are alcohols, and I met my cofounder who has a breadth of expertise in consumer industries, so we began by building a business that focused on using our personal strengths to best make a difference toward fighting climate change–making products with captured CO2.
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Without giving away any trade secrets, can you describe the process that you use to make vodka?
Our process starts with captured CO2 and renewable H2. As a CO2 utilization company, our technology is source-agnostic, so that we're able to use CO2 from any source. We wrote a paper earlier this year that describes the CO2 we use to make our products today, which is primarily biogenic. We have a patent filed and intellectual property around efficient thermal integration with direct air capture, so our ultimate goal is to use DAC. We generate H2 on-site using a mixture of wind and solar photovoltaic electricity with an electrolyzer sourced from NEL Hydrogen, with whom we have a project jointly with NREL focused on efficient integration of water electrolysis with downstream thermochemical processes. We introduce the captured CO2 and renewable H2 into a reactor that contains our catalysts, which are our primary trade secret–we have patents filed on their state of matter and a proprietary method of production. Our catalysts convert the CO2 and H2 into a clean mixture of alcohols and water, from which we distill out ethanol at very high purity (cleaner than food or pharmaceutical grade). We then dilute the ethanol with water to produce our 40% abv vodka.
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What makes Air Vodka different from other vodkas?
We conducted hundreds of blind taste tests and sampled several different types of water to understand what makes the best vodka. We knew we had made a premium product when we were consistently selected as the favorite in blind taste tests versus familiar premium brands (Grey Goose, Ketel One, Belvedere, etc.). At this point, we entered our vodka into three of the world’s largest spirits competitions in 2019: San Francisco World Spirits, Luxury Masters, and International Spirits Challenge, and from all three won gold medals in blind taste tests. In short, the taste and presentation make our vodka premium, and the process makes us unique and sustainable (net-negative CO2 in its cradle-to-gate life cycle, while traditional spirits are net-positive). Air Vodka is cleaner than other products on the market, and cleaner in its production, because we make it by building up ethanol from CO2, rather than breaking down six-carbon sugars.
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Products made with captured CO2 have not always done well, but you have been able to succeed in a premium market. How were you able to do that?
We recognized early on that there was massive potential in the spirits industry for innovation, revitalization, and integration of sustainable production methods. There’s also widespread familiarity with single bottles of premium liquid, and an emphasis on cleanliness in the vodka space. Starting from there, my cofounder Greg did an amazing job leading and innovating in product design, which allowed us to cultivate a brand that mimics the high purity of the vodka itself. We emphasized to consumers, through our product, that quality and appeal do not have to be compromised when creating a product that works with the environment, rather than against it. This allowed us to break into a historically tough market, all while demonstrating the potential of products made with captured CO2.
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What is next for Air Company?
While the CO2 mitigation we can achieve with spirits is not insignificant, Air Company has never been solely a vodka company, or even only a consumer goods company. Our goal is to convert CO2 into chemical commodities on a large scale with the potential for real impact. Air Company's technology has the potential to have a significant impact toward fighting climate change, and, if we're able to fully realize it, we have a global carbon abatement potential greater than 3.5 gigatonnes of CO2 per year. Though there is no single silver bullet technology that will fully solve our greenhouse gas problems, we believe that our approach can significantly contribute when we realize the scale that we're aiming for. That's why we're aggressively scaling our technology to thousands of times larger than our current ton-per-day scale CO2 conversion system to help reach these larger markets, and larger quantities of carbon removed from the atmosphere.
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Last, but certainly not least, do you have a signature cocktail recipe?
Air Vodka is best enjoyed on the rocks or in an Airtini.
Airtini Recipe
3 oz Air Vodka
Hint of Dry Vermouth
0.5 oz Castelvetrano olive juice
1 Castelvetrano olive
Splash dry vermouth into a chilled martini glass, swirling it until the glass is evenly coated. Pour the vodka and olive juice in a shaker with ice and shake. Strain into glass and garnish with an olive. Sip and indulge.
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A Conversation with Tim Flannery
September 1
Join AirMiners on Zoom Sept 1 to hear Tim Flannery talk about his interest in carbon removal, novel approaches in ocean and mineralization to draw down CO2, and future prospects for our industry. Tim is the Chief Councillor at the Australian Climate Council: Australia’s leading climate communications organization that “provides authoritative information, advice, and solutions about climate change” for Australian citizens.
For more information, click here.
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