The question of [existence of a universal inverse semigroup][1] of an arbitrary semigroup has been answered before (this is a construction similar to the Grothendieck group). Let's refer to the universal inverse semigroup of a semigroup $S$ as $G_I[S]$ (for this question). It was noted that $G_I[S]$ for a commutative semigroup $S$ is not necessarily commutative (because of nilpotent elements). For a general non-commutative semigroup $S$, it's also clear that $G_I[S]$ is in general not an embedding, i.e. $S \not\subset G_I[S]$. However, it seems to me as if $G_I[S]$ will be an embedding for a commutative semigroup $S$, i.e. $S \subset G_I[S]$ (more precisely, $G_I[S]$ contains a sub-semigroup isomorphic to $S$). Is this true?

**Note** This question is identical to this [question][2] at math.stackexchange.com.


  [1]: http://math.stackexchange.com/q/104893/12490
  [2]: http://math.stackexchange.com/q/162765/12490