Method for determining origin of carbon source of chemical substance

A method for determining whether a main chemical substance comprises a resource-recycled carbon, the method comprising:

• providing a standard chemical substance having carbon element in which carbon has been recycled as a resource;
• measuring a carbon-14 content rate Ri of the standard chemical substance having carbon element in which carbon has been recycled as a resource, the carbon-14 content rate R1 being measured by a method selected from the group consisting of liquid scintillation counting, gas proportional counting, and accelerator mass spectrometry,
• wherein the content rate R1 is an average value of carbon-14 content rates of a plurality of standard chemical substances;
• providing a chemical substance to be identified, the chemical substance to be identified being selected from the group consisting of ethanol, a polymer having a constituent unit derived from ethylene, butadiene, propylene, isobutene, acetaldehyde, acetic acid, ethyl acetate, methyl (meth)acrylate, ethyl-t-butyl ether ethylene glycol, an ester composition, an acrylic acid, an aminohexanoic acid, diethyl carbonate, a polyester resin, a polyethylene resin (PE), a polyethylene terephthalate resin (PET), a polypropylene resin (PP), a polyisobutylene resin, a polymethyl methacrylate resin (PMMA), ethylene-propylene-diene rubber (EPDM), a polybutylene terephthalate resin (PBT), a polyethylene furanoate resin (PEF), and a polyurethane resin (PU);
• measuring a carbon-14 content rate R2 of the chemical substance to be identified, the carbon-14 content rate R2 being measured by a method selected from the group consisting of liquid scintillation counting, gas proportional counting, and accelerator mass spectrometry;
• calculating a ratio (R2/R1) of the content rate R2 to the content rate R1;
• and
• determining that the chemical substance to be identified contains resource-recycled carbon from the ratio (R2/R1),
• wherein the chemical substance to be identified contains resource-recycled carbon when a ratio (R2/R1) is 0.5 or more and 2.0 or less;
• and
• producing one or more selected from the group consisting of ethanol, ethylene, and a polymer from the chemical substance to be identified responsive to determining that the chemical substance to be identified contains resource-recycled carbon.