China's Progress in Carbon Dioxide Utilization      

Converting carbon dioxide into high value-added chemicals will not only reduce pollution effectively, but also push forward the development of certain chemical industries. Up till now, carbon dioxide-to-chemicals conversion technologies have received worldwide attention. In industry, there are four major chemicals synthesized from carbon dioxide: urea, salicylic acid, cyclic carbonates and polycarbonates. Of these, the production of urea is the largest, but the demand for polycarbonates is bound to increase in the future.
    Recently, China also made certain achievements in independent development and utilization of carbon dioxide resources. For example, its technique of using carbon dioxide to prepare multi-functional composite metal hydroxide, modified ammonium bicarbonate, ethylene glycol and methane has gone into industrial production; the preparation technology of high value-added carbonates and styrene has entered the engineering stage; the dimethyl carbonate preparation technology also achieved success in laboratory studies. In particular, with carbon dioxide as raw materials and after copolymerization with ethylene oxide, the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed polyethylene carbonate (PEC) resin successfully and finally produced semi-rigid aliphatic polycarbonate foams. This material is completely biodegradable without leaving any harmful substance, and is mainly used in the manufacturing of household electrical appliances, building materials, furniture and automotives.