Technology:
Yasuaki Einaga of Keio University and Kazuya Nakata of Tokyo University of Science jointly
developed a technology to synthesize formaldehyde, a raw material of plastics
and adhesive, from seawater and carbon dioxide. The technology generates gas by
electrifying in seawater with the help of an electrode made of artificial
diamond and collects generated gas to produce formaldehyde. Hydrogen ions contained
in seawater react to carbon dioxide and generates formaldehyde. Theoretically,
it is possible to produce formaldehyde inexhaustibly with seawater and carbon
dioxide. In addition, the technology will be of great help for effective
utilization of carbon dioxide recovered from manufacturing plants and thermal
electric power plants. The research team will advance the technology for
practical application in alliance with chemical companies.
It
is possible to use a carbon electrode to synthesize formaldehyde, but the
generation efficiency is 20% at most. However, the new technology successfully
increased the generation efficiency to about 74%, and it does not need high
temperature and high pressure. Besides, it needs only small amount of
electricity for synthesis. Low electricity expense makes the new technology
highly competitive in terms of production cost. However, it is a critical issue
how to develop large diamonds at low cost for practical application because the
new technology needs an electrode made of artificial diamond. Currently,
formaldehyde is synthesized by adding high temperature and high pressure to methanol
made of natural gas and coal. World production of formaldehyde is 8 million
tons per year at present.
Plastics made of rice
Efforts are being made to create plastics
without relying on oil
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