We have lately been documenting how the valuable co-product of coal use, Carbon Dioxide, can be utilized in the synthesis of gaseous and liquid fuels. We had also introduced some technologies wherein CO2 can be used as a raw material for plastics manufacturing. Herein is yet more documentation attesting to the value of Carbon Dioxide for that purpose; and, it's value is greater than at first might appear.
Additional explanation follows the excerpt:
"Enrivonmentally Benign Urethane and Urea Synthesis in Supercritical Carbon Dioxide
Author(s): YOSHIDA MASAAKI, SATO YOSHIKI, ABE MANABU, SATO AKINAO
(Utsunomiya University., Faculty of Engineering, Japan)
Journal: Nippon Kagakkai Koen Yokoshu; Vol. 82nd; Page 117(2002)
Abstract: Instead of organic solvents which are toxic and flammable, when we used supercritical carbon dioxide which is none toxic and inflammable, the organic reactions were more effective and selective. On the case of urethane and urea synthesis, supercritical carbon dioxide was a direct raw material as a phosgene replacement."
Urethanes are extraordinarily useful organic compounds. The paint on your car is likely to be based on urethane. The pillow you lay your head on at night is likely to be urethane foam. And, as we've, in other places, for other reasons, documented, the Federal Highways Administration specifies two-component urethane grout as the best technology to stop groundwater leaks into road tunnels.It is what the State of WV should be using to rehabilitate the Wheeling Tunnels.
Unfortunately, in current manufacturing processes, the production of urethane can start with some dangerous chemicals; phosgene, otherwise known, and once used in warfare, as "mustard gas", among them. Worse, perhaps, phosgene is manufactured from chlorine gas, itself a decidedly unpleasant and dangerous material. Some chemical manufacturing facilities in the Ohio Valley manufacture urethanes, using those materials, and some unhealthy situations have, in the past, occurred.
In this technology, explained by Japanese researchers, Carbon Dioxide, as arises from coal use, serves as a very safe, even benign, replacement for some very dangerous stuff in the manufacture of some very valuable commercial products.
Wouldn't it be far better to use a relatively benign co-product of coal use, whose only immediate metabolic effect is to tickle your nose when you take a sip of the bubbly, to manufacture valuable urethanes and other plastics?
Carbon Dioxide is a valuable by-product of our coal use. We should be focused more on figuring out how to profitably use it, rather than on how to expensively stuff it all done geologic rat holes, thus subsidizing the greedy petroleum industry's oil-scavenging efforts; or, on how to tax the producers of it, our productive coal industries, out of existence via deceptive shell games like Cap & Trade.