Filling High Pressure CO2 Tanks From Sugar Fermentation Gas

A maker known as Hyperspace Pirate figured out a way to capture the CO2 byproduct from fermenting sugar for fuel — rather than venting it to the air. But here's the catch: gaseous CO2 is bulky, and compressing it into liquid form typically requires extreme pressure. Hackaday reports that the solution is to drop the temperature. At freezing, standard off-the-shelf compressors can do the job. Using oil-less and regular compressors paired with oil separators and desiccant filters, the maker worked to fill pressurized bottles with pure CO2. Removing moisture proved trickier than expected, even after desiccant treatment, but the project demonstrated that this approach could work for applications like paintball guns with some refinement.

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