LANXESS showcases innovative water treatment technologies

At the international trade show IFAT, which took place from October 16-18, 2019, in Mumbai, the Liquid Purification Technologies (LPT) business unit at LANXESS India presented its comprehensive range of products and services relating to process water and wastewater. A custom selection of products and technologies is often vital. In many cases, optimum results can be achieved only with the smart combination of several technologies. LANXESS has many years of combined expertise for this in the areas of ion exchange, adsorbers, reverse osmosis and ultrafiltration.

“Innovative solutions for water and wastewater treatment are gaining in importance in an attempt to use this resource responsibly. LANXESS can make valuable contributions to this in all application areas,” said Mr. Prakash Shanmugam, Head of LPT business unit at LANXESS India.

Current trends such as electro-mobility provide LPT’s operations with additional impetus: “Recently implemented improvements to processing technology and process efficiency in the production of ion exchange resins in Leverkusen are already bearing fruit. Thanks to the resulting capacity enhancement, we can successfully satisfy the recent rise in demand from the battery industry, for example,” explains Mr. Shanmugam. Numerous ion exchange resins from the Lewatit product range are also being produced at the plant in Leverkusen for use in the food industry.

High Performance (HP) RO membrane elements a market success

The range of Lewabrane high performance (HP) RO membrane elements for energy-efficient brackish water treatment, which was recently launched in the market, is already well established. On the basis of an optimized membrane structure, they offer improved rejection with a higher flux rate compared with standard elements.

The company’s involvement in the Multi-ReUse research project shows just how important reverse osmosis is to LANXESS, especially for wastewater treatment. One aim, in this context, is to take suitable action to minimize fouling and thereby ensure stable operation in the long term.

On the basis of a sales partnership with French company Polymem SA, which was agreed in 2018, LANXESS has added ‘Gigamem’ ultrafiltration elements to its portfolio for water treatment. The first projects to result from this cooperation have been successfully launched in the Mediterranean region.

Reverse osmosis and ion exchange hand in hand

The combination of reverse osmosis and ion exchange opens up new areas of application for water treatment, for which a single technology would be no match. For example, textile effluent recycling using ion exchange resins for hardness removal as well as colour and organics removal as a pretreatment to reverse osmosis to enhance the recovery and operating life of membranes is already being used successfully in many textile effluent zero liquid discharge (ZLD) plants.

The current version of the LewaPlus software developed by LANXESS that is used for designing combined systems of this kind now also features a cost module for ion exchange, so that – in combination with the integrated cost calculation for reverse osmosis – it is easy to estimate the total investment costs and operating costs.

Arsenic removal from drinking water and wastewater

Arsenic pollution is one of the most dangerous forms of drinking water contamination. Some very high concentrations of arsenic occur in the groundwater in many regions of the United States, South America and Asia. Elevated arsenic levels are also found in Bangladesh and North East of India for example. Using Bayoxide iron oxide adsorbers, LANXESS is providing an efficient technology for the removal of arsenic from drinking water and wastewater. The core of the Bayoxide system is a solid bed of iron oxide beads. The beads have finely structured surfaces that adsorb pollutants when contaminated water flows over them.