I miss thecarbon dioxide and the producers of sparkling water and carbonated drinks don’t know what to do anymore. According to some companies, CO2 has even become “nowhere to be found”. Today’s problem concerns Italy, but in the recent past it also affected other countries, including the United Kingdom.
The problems of the sudden absence of carbon dioxide are related to broader critical issues, in part annoyed by the Covid and especially from war in Ukraine It goes round and round, even in this case it’s to blame for the skyrocketing cost of electricity and raw materials.
The fact is that CO2 is mainly recovered as waste during the processing of other chemical and industrial products. It is no coincidence that when investigating the causes of the absence of carbon dioxide in Italy, a name that we had already heard on the occasion of another shortage: that of AdBlue, the fundamental additive for the operation of the latest generation of diesel vehicles. .
Let’s talk about YARA Ferrara plants, one of the largest and most important ammonia production centers in Europe. Months ago, YARA was forced to cut ammonia and urea production precisely because the enormous cost of raw materials – especially methane – made the operations economically unsustainable. The problem is that by producing ammonia, the YARA plants also produced a huge amount of CO2, which was then sold to other companies, including Acqua Sant’Anna, which the president explained in a recent interview with La Stampa that he had to reduce the production of carbonated water bottles precisely because CO2 was “literally unavailable”.
It is not clear at this time how serious and widespread the problem is. Some other companies — including soda queen Coca-Cola — said they haven’t encountered any problems with the CO2 supply yet.
Source: Lega Nerd
