BEIJING, April 9 (Xinhuanet) -- If plans to remove
carbon dioxide -- the primary greenhouse gas -- from smokestacks
succeed, the gas could be harnessed and turned into plastic products, new
research claims.
Removing the carbon dioxide from smokestack emissions
could enable a process by which the heat-trapping gas would be turned into a raw
material for making polycarbonates, a type of plastic, and keep it from raising
global temperatures even more, according to two groups of researchers who
presented their findings Tuesday at a meeting of the American Chemical
Society in New Orleans.
"Using CO2 to create polycarbonates might not solve
the total carbon dioxide problem, but it could be a significant contribution,"
said the leader of one team, Thomas M¨¹ller of the Institut f¨¹r Technishe und
Makromolekulare Chemie.
Carbon dioxide is also cheaper and less toxic than
other starting materials traditionally used to make plastics.
Polycarbonates, which are easily worked and molded,
are used to make many transparent materials, including CDs and DVDs, eyeglasses
and drinking bottles. Both teams are developing methods to transform carbon
dioxide into the starting materials for polycarbonates and expect that people
could be watching movies on waste-carbon dioxide DVDs sooner than they think.
"I would say it's a matter of a few years" before
these waste-derived polymers are available to the public, M¨¹ller said.
(Agencies)
