Specialty chemicals company LANXESS will host a two-day “Food and Biomolecules Symposium” at its corporate headquarters in Cologne and at Chempark Leverkusen on November 13 and 14, 2023.

The focus will be on technical training, which will include up-to-date information on ion exchange and adsorber resins from the Lewatit product family. In addition to the use of the resins for the recovery, purification and processing of sugar solutions and other food ingredients, the treatment of biomolecules from fermentation and extraction processes, for example pharmaceutical and cosmetic active substances and ingredients, will also be presented. The speakers will be Dr. Nadja Hermsdorf and Dr. Jenny Böttger – both technical marketing managers in the Liquid Purification Technologies (LPT) business unit.

On the first day, participants will gain insights into the company’s latest developments in the two subject areas. These are the treatment – specifically decolorization and demineralization – of sugar solutions and the isolation of a wide variety of biomolecules. These include amino acids, oligo- and polypeptides, polysaccharides and O- and/or N-sulfonated glycosaminoglycans (mucopolysaccharides), but also alkaloids, vitamins and antibiotics. Both strands will be further explored in parallel lectures in the afternoon. In each case, established and new resins for these applications will be presented and their specific properties and advantages explained.

The second day of the symposium will be devoted to tours of Chempark Leverkusen. In small groups, visitors will gain an insight into the work of the application technology and quality control laboratories, as well as research and innovation at LPT. Examples of test methods for specific resin parameters, equipment for laboratory synthesis and topic-specific application technology tests will be presented.

The aspect of sustainability is also playing an increasingly important role in the food, cosmetics and pharmaceutical sectors. Dr. Stefan Neufeind, Head of Technical Marketing at LPT, will address this explicitly with his presentation on sustainably produced ion exchange resins at the beginning of the symposium. LANXESS offers sustainably produced resins under the name Scopeblue. They consist of more than half renewable raw materials or have a carbon footprint that is less than half that of the equivalent product made from conventional raw materials. Such products help users achieve their own sustainability goals. At the same time, their use is a marketing argument and purchase incentive for customer products.