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The UK’s biggest wholesaler has begun rationing beer, cider and soft drinks as rising demand amid the heatwave and England’s World Cup campaign comes up against a shortage of food-grade carbon dioxide gas (CO2) which is hitting supplies.
Booker, which supplies thousands of convenience stores including the Londis, Budgens and Premier chains, as well as restaurant chains including Wagamama and Carluccio’s, is limiting beer and soft drinks purchases to 10 cases per customer and cider to five cases. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jun/26/beer-rationed-as-uks-food-grade-carbon-dioxide-runs-low
This is a serious problem as it reads as if they're limiting stores and restaurants. Not individuals though most would not need 10 cases. Unless there was a run on beer :)
Somehow, can't we fix climate change and the beer problem at the same time?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by anubi on Wednesday June 27 2018, @07:22AM (12 children)
I did not know there was even a distinction between food-grade and industrial CO2, until it was placed in the jug.
It all comes from fractionating air, doesn't it?
I may be in trouble here, as I have been getting CO2 for years from an industrial refrigeration supplier, who gets it from a welding supply wholesaler, who gets it from Linde Air Products - who seems to supply everybody with the stuff. Basically, I bring my jug into the refrigeration shop, the wholesaler drops by the next morning, picks it up, along with lots of other people's jugs, brings them en masse to Linde, who fills the whole truckload, then the wholesaler makes his rounds again the next morning, dropping the jugs back to the various retail suppliers ( also picking up the next round of empties ), who then return the filled jugs back to the customer.
Kinda like the milkman of days gone past.
Linde really does not want to deal with me, dropping everything they are doing to fill one 20 pound CO2 jug, nor does the welding supply wholesaler, who counts on the economies of scale of dealing with dozens of jugs at a time, and not waiting around for me to arrive or retrieve my jug, nor account for miniscule transactions.
Nor did I really want to go to Los Angeles... especially knowing the wholesaler runs a truck back and forth from my area to the Linde plant just for that purpose.
I understood everyone got the same CO2. Whether it was to be used for refrigerant ( R744 ), welding gas, or beverage. But some of the jugs may be dirty. If you supplied a clean jug, Linde just put the liquid CO2 out of their fractionator in it. ( Linde also sells nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and a whole mess of "rare gases" that come off the other parts of the fractionating process. )
Did I miss something?
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @07:49AM (6 children)
I was looking around at this a few weeks ago and came to the conclusion "maybe food grade has fewer impurities (other gases), or maybe it's exactly the same".
(Score: 5, Informative) by MostCynical on Wednesday June 27 2018, @09:37AM (1 child)
From http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/BN-Army-Blog/C02-Myths-and-Rumors [thebrewingnetwork.com]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday June 27 2018, @11:31AM
Thanks! I will be asking about that. I'll come back and thank you with a modpoint when I get some! :)
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday June 27 2018, @09:38AM (3 children)
As long as those other gases were in the air anyway, I suppose I would not give much of a hoot. As long as they weren't hydrocarbons.
Preferably not oxygen... well that tends to oxidize things.
I don't want traces of machine and lubricating oils in my beverage. They probably aren't good for me, I would not like the way they look, floating on top my glass of drink, it would probably taste bad, too.
I have been getting my CO2 for years from an industrial supplier, I have been told its all the same, and I have not noted making any contaminated batches of sodapop. Matter of fact, I have noted other aluminum cylinders in the system stamped with "PEPSI". Jugs look the same, but painted slightly differently. Same fittings.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @01:25PM
They distil at quite different temperatures, so that makes separation and purification a bit easier.
I've worked with liquid Nitrogen (which is clear) but never with liquid Oxygen.
They said that you have to be very careful with LOX because when it's liquid it's much more concentrated than at gas temperatures. And anything that burns or corrodes, burns with it once you manage to ignite it. Also they said that LOX is pale blue, so as long as your CO2 is not pale blue I think you're OK :-)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @09:12PM (1 child)
I'd suggest then taking the advice I was given by an ex merchant navy sparky who spent most of the 60's and 70's drinking his way around the world 'never drink any of the beers sold in any of the port bars in South America', from his tales of woe, machine and lubricating oils would be the least of your worries, and just be thankful you're not into Scrumpy [wikipedia.org], you'd probably get mildly concerned about the fact that some of the containers used by some of the smaller farm 'labels' for shipping look suspiciously like recycled old herbicide/pesticide ones...still, it all adds to the bouquet and mystique, besides, that which does not kill us &etc...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 28 2018, @07:42AM
That sounds suspiciously like the stories my Grandpa used to tell me about moonshine, Al Capone's organization, and Prohibition.
I got the strong idea that those farmers just wanted to be left alone. Yes, a lot of 'em had stills. And what they made was used around the farm. We drank some. Made medicine and salves out of it. Made veterinary supplies with it. Jugs of fine moonshine were also used as a stock in trade... a currency ... a way of storing the essence of your corn that would hold its value for years after you made it. If you did not do something with your excess corn, it rots. But if you did not grow enough corn, your animals had nothing to eat. So the wise farmer always grew a lot more corn than he needed just for insurance everything was gonna get fed, even if you did get a bad month or so in the growing season that stunted your crop.
But then, we had these guys show up and they wanted us to make it for them, and we got quotas. If we made several gallons for the guy, he would go away for a week or so then come back and want more. Tell that head to go take a hike? Then you wake up one morning and your barn's on fire. So you did what you had to do to make the head go away happy, so it did not make trouble for you. Once that head had laid eyes on you and your farm, either you did what the head told you to do, or you had to find some way to blow it off its mount. Trouble is the heads were far more organized than the farmers. Far more violent, too. Their leadership was based on fear. The only way to get rid of 'em was to get rid of 'em all... but the heads were all over the place and talked to each other, and you had a farm to run.
So, we gave the head a bunch of stuff we certainly would not drink. He got ALL of the still output... well, everything but the center cut ... ( which was the purest ethanol ). We overran the still so hot that it produced copious quantities of methanol, amyl alcohols, fusel oils, etc. That's the stuff no farmer in his right mind would drink. Make you sicker than a dog. With a hangover to match the mother of all hangovers. But we made a lot of it, so as to keep the heads happy. The heads would collect our jugs, go away, bottle and sell the crap to the city folk.
The government got wind of how bad this stuff was... and put out all sorts of warnings about it being poison. And they were not kidding.
Good moonshine is good moonshine. There is a fine art to making this stuff. Done right, its really tasty stuff.
But when it is made under threat of having one's barn burned down, just pure economics of production with no love or care about making a good product - nah - just doing it to make a buck, or get some head to go away without causing you yet more problems - you will get incredibly bad stuff.
I imagine you are referring to product made under the same conditions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @10:12AM
Sounds like that's how it's done. Also for Dewar buckets of liquid Nitrogen or Oxygen for laboratory use.
In Europe this niche is filled by Air Liquide [wikipedia.org] company.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Wednesday June 27 2018, @03:21PM (1 child)
>It all comes from fractionating air, doesn't it?
Actually no. Most CO2 is captured as a byproduct of industrial chemical synthesis, such as producing ammonia fertilizer from methane gas. Someone posted a comment above with more detail, including that the UK gets the majority of it's food grade CO2 from a single ammonia producer.
Of course the primary production of CO2 is from burning fossil fuels - but there tends to be a lot of other nasty shit in those fuels, even if they're burned completely. Nobody wants radon-enriched beer.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday June 28 2018, @07:22AM
There is a thing called clean coal. Beautiful clean coal. Meaning they're taking out coal, they're going to clean it. We sell coal. The coal mines are dying, but the only coal we give is coal to China. Do you think they clean the coal? Believe me, they don't. And the UK has so much coal, maybe they don't know how to clean it. We'll teach them. For a price. Or, just buy beautiful clean American coal!!!!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by richtopia on Wednesday June 27 2018, @03:50PM (1 child)
My understanding is the real difference between industrial grade/ beverage grade/ medical grade gasses is accountability. Medical grade gasses always have ownership properly documented and handoffs of tanks have paperwork for traceability. Similar for beverage grade, although probably less signatures involved.
I think there is also minimum purity differences, however I have been told that industrial grade gasses meet the medical grade requirements almost everywhere in the USA.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday June 28 2018, @08:25AM
That sounds right down the line of what I was told... that is the product itself was pure, but the various grades were in the accountability to where the jugs have been.
If they filled a jug that had an unknown history, who knows what was in that jug before? Sure, it was marked and valved for CO2, but say the guy had left the thing outside with the valve wide open? Or worse yet, something else got sucked in because it was empty and thermal expansion/contraction ( i.e, empty, laying in a pool of contaminated water )? What if he had used it to store compressed air from an old oily compressor? ( If you have used old compressors, you know how oily that air can be! ). You would never get that oil back out of the jug!
If you know the history of where your jug has been, and know you have never ran it completely down ( its customary to return the jug with maybe 100PSI pressure still in it, just to make sure the positive pressure will blow out contaminants as the jug is connected ), if you are willing to certify where the jug has been, it will be filled with clean CO2, and you can use it as such. I was told it was not cost effective to maintain separate filling stations for each grade of CO2 on such small scales as 20 pound jugs, which are commonly used for refrigerant, welding shield gas, beverages, and paintball gun propellant.
But if you are talking humongous amounts, like process CO2, it will then meet individual customer spec.
I had to go back and do research again on this... found several websites which clarified the meanings of the grades of CO2.
I first started making my own sodapop about 20 years ago... when I was getting priced out of the market with people wanting over a buck for a 2-liter bottle of the stuff. I met their price-hike with a cord-cut, and started making my own, as it was much cheaper for me to do so, not only that, I could now make whatever flavor I wanted to toy with. The only trick was how to carbonate, and once I found out how easy it was, ( a jug of CO2, regulator, hose, tire fitting, tire valve, and a 2-liter soda bottle ), I bought commercial soda no more.
Thanks to this group, I now have a much better understanding of the grades of CO2, of which I was ignorant other than what I was told. And feel relieved - actually much relieved - that I have not been poisoning myself using the stuff intended as use for refrigerant, even though at the time I started using it, I was getting it from a more distant welding shop, and they had told me it was all the same. Welding gas, refrigerant, paintball gun propellant, beverage, whatever. All came out of the same spigot at the air distillery. All the fittings are the same. Apparently each gas has its own specific thread for its fittings, so as to avoid misfills with the wrong gas.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]