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Benjamin Steinberg
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The answer is no.

In a cancellative monoid left invertible elements are right invertible. If yx =1 then xyx=x and so xy =1 by cancellation. So you are asking to invert a given element in some cancellative monoid.

Take a fg cancellative monoid M not embeddable in a group. Enumerate the elements of M and invert them one by one. Then the original monoid would embed in the unit group of the direct limit of this process.

Benjamin Steinberg
  • 38.6k
  • 3
  • 104
  • 186