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Lewatit ion exchange resins are an established and indispensable component in the food and beverage industry
Specialty chemicals company LANXESS India presented its innovative Lewatit ion-exchange resins tailored for sugar decolourisation and purification at the 83rd STAI Centennial Annual Convention & International Sugar Expo at Bharat Mandapam Convention Centre, New Delhi.
Lewatit ion exchange resins are an established and indispensable component in the food and beverage industry. Lewatit S resins are certified in many countries around the world for the processing of food, beverages, and food and drink additives. The Lewatit S series has, among other things, Halal and Kosher certifications.
Lewatit ion exchangers and Lewatit adsorbers play a crucial role in separation processes. Often, there is no alternative to isolating, enriching, and cleaning valuable materials from the liquid phase. Lewatit makes a decisive contribution to giving the products resulting from separation processes a purity, shelf life, pleasant taste, and good appearance that meet specifications.
Today, the main fields of ion exchange resin application in the sugar industry can be described as follows:
- Softening before evaporation and crystallization
- Demineralisation to increase yield by the elimination of ash
- Decolourisation to improve sugar quality
- High-quality liquid sugar production by elimination of ash and colourants
- Catalysis by strong acid cation resins of the inversion of sucrose
- Chromatographic separation of glucose and fructose
- Chromatographic separation of sugar and by-products from molasses
The colour of sugar juice from beet and cane increases during the production process. Colourants such as caramel colour bodies are formed. When producing refined sugar, various Lewatit adsorber resins based on styrene or acrylic polymers can be used to decolourise sugar syrups with more than 1,000 ICU to meet all quality requirements in the sugar industry.
Excellent operating capacity, low chemical, and low water consumption are key considerations in plant operation. Monodisperse macroporous or gel-type Lewatit ion exchange resins offer major advantages for the decolourisation process of food ingredients.
- Higher operating capacity at equal total capacity (+10 per cent)
- Better kinetic properties of monodisperse Lewatit IXRs
- Longer lifetime of Lewatit IXRs
- Longer cycle times (breakthrough)
- Lower Lewatit IXR loss (3–5 per cent)
In addition to decolorisation, LANXESS offers optimised solutions for reverse demineralisation of non-inverted liquid sugar. Liquid sugar, which is widely used in the food industry, benefits from ion exchange processes that enable complete demineralisation through exchange at the functional groups with cations and anions.
The ion exchange system for reverse demineralisation comprises strong base anion exchange resin (SBA) and weak acid cation exchange resin (WAC) units to avoid the formation of inverted sugar.
The first stage involves removing the anionic impurities, and the second stage involves removing the cationic counterparts (removal of cations).