Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CEEP) announced this September it is investing an undisclosed amount into carbon conversion research to create more sustainable packaging materials.
Set to be carried out by researchers at Swansea University in Wales, United Kingdom, the three-year project will explore electrolysis of carbon dioxide into ethylene, a key component of the high-density polyethylene (HDPE) used to make its plastic bottle caps.
Electrolysis works by passing an electric current through a cell, half of which is filled with captured carbon dioxide, the other half with a water-based solution. An electrified catalyst draws charged hydrogen atoms from the water molecules into the other half of the unit separated by a membrane, where they combine with charged carbon atoms from the carbon dioxide molecules to form ethylene.
If the process proves highly efficient and productive, Coca-Cola hopes to scale it up feed it with carbon dioxide captured from the air near its factories or directly from its own smokestacks.
The project is the latest to be funded through CCEP’s innovation investment engine, CCEP Ventures (CCEPV), and follows a series of investments designed to drive innovation and sustainability progress in line with CCEP’s net zero 2040 ambition.
“If scaled, this technology could impact both our fossil fuel use and carbon emissions and help to accelerate a low-carbon future for CCEP,” said Craig Twyford, Head of CCEP Ventures.
Ethylene ranks third for carbon emissions amongst manufactured chemicals worldwide, after ammonia and cement. It is usually produced in steam crackers using naphtha, liquified petroleum gas, ethane, propane, or butane as feedstock, which are cracked into ethylene at temperatures of around 800 C. Cracking generates between 0.85 to 1.80 metric tons of carbon emissions per ton of ethylene created, according to S&P Global. Globally, that amounts to more than 260 million metric tons of CO2 emissions per year.
The investment follows a recent partnership between Cola-Cola and the University of California, Berkeley to develop scalable methods of converting captured CO2 into sugar.