German speciality chemicals and engineering plastics producer Lanxess (Cologne; www.lanxess.com) is collaborating with French energy group TotalEnergies (Paris; www.totalenergies.com) to offer its ion exchange resins customers circular solutions for use in treatment of wastewater and chemical process flows as by the food industry.

TotalEnergies produces a biocircular styrene that unlike conventional styrene is based on tall oil, which is derived from a tree resin and is a by-product of pulp production. The sustainable origin of the styrene is certified according to the mass balance accounting approach of ISCC Plus, which allows fossil-based and renewable feedstock to be mixed in production but kept separate financially.

Marcel Beermann, head of Global Procurement & Logistics at Lanxess said customers are increasingly asking for sustainable solutions, and raw materials with a low carbon footprint are a “key lever.”

Along with styrene, Lanxess notes that it draws on other sustainable substitutes for fossil raw materials in its production. For example, it uses biocircular acrylonitrile to make another type of ion exchange resins, and its preservative Preventol contains fatty acid mixtures based on sunflower oil.

Additionally, the resin maker’s prepolymers sold under the Adiprene Green label contain starch-based polyether polyols, while its intermediate Trimethylpropane Scopeblue consists of about half sustainable N-butylaldehyde.

The Tepex Scopeblue composite is based on flax and polylactic acid, and the high-performance plastic Durethan Scopeblue uses biocircular cyclohexane and waste glass.

Lanxess said in autumn 2022 that it already has certified values for the carbon footprint of its base engineering resins, as well as for PA 6 precursor caprolactam and the glass fibre reinforcement it manufactures.

Future plans call for extended use of the company’s new grades of ISCC Plus-certified PA and PBT that contain a significant proportion of sustainable raw materials (see Plasteurope.com of 13.10.2022). A further step will be to calculate the footprint of compounding to unlock further emission cuts.

Related: TotalEnergies launches low-carbon polymers

The deal between Lanxess and TotalEnergies is the second cooperation in sustainable styrene announced in recent months. In November 2022, Ineos Styrolution (Frankfurt, Germany; www.ineos-styrolution.com) signed a Memorandum of Understanding with South Korean chemical producer SK picglobal (Seoul; www.skpicglobal.com) to draw mass-balanced styrene from SK’s plant in Ulsan, South Korea (see Plasteurope.com of 30.11.2022).