Specialty chemicals company Lanxess has entered into an agreement with French energy group TotalEnergies on the supply of mass-balanced, biocircular styrene. Under the agreement, Lanxess will use tall-oil based styrene sourced from TotalEnergies to produce sustainable ion exchange resins - products mainly applied in the treatment of wastewater and chemical process flows, as well as in the food industry.
Tall oil is derived from a tree resin and is a by-product of pulp production. The sustainable origin of the styrene supplied by TotalEnergies is ISCC Plus certified - an important requirement, as Lanxess offers its products in accordance with this certification standard as well and therefore relies on the same transparency for its raw materials.
Lanxess said the new partnership was is response to customer demand for sustainable solutions, and ‘raw materials with a low carbon footprint are a key lever here’, noted Marcel Beermann, Head of Global Procurement & Logistics at Lanxess. It also fits with the company’s ambition announced last year of making its upstream and downstream supply chains climate-neutral by 2050 (Scope 3). This includes indirectly generated emissions, particularly in purchased raw materials, but also in logistics and end products. Lanxess is aiming to achieve climate neutrality for its Scope 1 and 2 processes by 2040.
Styrene is not the only sustainable alternative sourced by Lanxess. The company uses biocircular acrylonitrile for another type of ion exchange resins, while the prepolymers sold under the Adiprene Green brand contain starch-based polyether polyols. Scopeblue, the intermediate trimethylpropane produced by the company, consists of about half sustainable N-butylaldehyde, while its composite Tepex Scopeblue is based on flax and polylactic acid. And the high-performance plastic Durethan Scopeblue uses biocircular cyclohexane and waste glass.