LANXESS: New sustainable ion exchange resin for water softening

LANXESS is adding Lewatit S 1567 Scopeblue to its portfolio of sustainably produced ion exchange resins. The strongly acidic cation exchange resin, which the specialty chemicals company produces in a solvent-free process, is used for softening drinking water in industrial plants and in standard household filter cartridges. Lewatit S 1567 Scopeblue is characterized by its high resistance to disinfectants.

LANXESS uses the Scopeblue label for particularly sustainable products. The monomer used in Lewatit S 1567 Scopeblue is styrene, which is derived from renewable or waste-based feedstocks, namely tall oil fatty acids. This makes it possible to replace more than 90 percent of fossil raw materials and reduce the CO₂ footprint by up to 76 percent compared with conventionally produced resins.

The LANXESS site in Bitterfeld, Germany, where Lewatit S 1567 Scopeblue is produced, received ISCC PLUS certification in January of this year. This was one of the requirements for offering the resin as a Scopeblue variant.

The LANXESS Liquid Purification Technologies (LPT) business unit has been offering various Scopeblue grades in addition to its conventional Lewatit resins since November 2022. For this purpose, the ion exchange resin production at the Leverkusen site was ISCC PLUS certified at the beginning of 2022. The current product range includes three weak acid cation exchangers (WAC) based on acrylate and one strong acid cation exchanger (SAC) based on polystyrene.

Dr. Stefan Neufeind, Head of Technical Marketing at LPT, explains: “With our new Scopeblue products, we are for the first time offering ion exchange resins with a significantly improved carbon footprint, underlining our role as a pioneer in climate-friendly solutions. In addition to the usual high product quality, we offer our customers a concrete sustainability benefit and thus also a competitive advantage.”

Scopeblue – the LANXESS label for even more sustainability

The Scopeblue label was implemented by LANXESS to identify its own products that are either based on more than 50 percent sustainable raw materials or have a carbon footprint that is less than half that of their conventional counterparts. They are classified according to the mass balance approach and are chemically identical to the conventional product. Therefore, no changes need to be made to existing equipment and systems to use them.

Detailed information on the products and services of the LANXESS Liquid Purification Technologies business unit can be found at https://lanxess.com/en/Products-and-Brands/Brands/Lewatit.