Lanxess plans oxone monopersulfate expansion

Lanxess has announced plans to invest “a lower double-digit million euro sum” in order to expand oxone monopersulfate capacity at its site in Memphis, Tennessee, by 50% by the end of 2022. This comes in response to “continuous strong demand for disinfectants”, the company said.

Oxone monopersulfate is the main active ingredient in Lanxess’s Virkon and Rely+On consumer and agricultural disinfection products. These are used to treat COVID-19, avian influenza and African swine fever, among other things. The Rely+On Virkon product is claimed to completely inactivate the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 in 60 seconds

Oxone is also sold as an oxidising agent for many other applications, including the preparation of surfaces within the production process of printed circuit boards and to break down paper products containing wet strength resins during paper reprocessing. It is also a primary component of denture cleansers.

In an entirely separate field, Lanxess has joined Swiss firm Hüni in the next phase of commercialisation of the modular plant concept ReeL, (Resource-efficient manufacture of leather chemicals). The two firms are now working on initial customer projects, with Hüni focusing on plant engineering and construction of the container-sixed modules and Lanxess contributing its chemical process engineering and application expertise.

Lanxess’s Leather business unit developed ReeL in partnership with Invite and Heller-Leder, with sponsorship from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The process is used to recycle shavings from leather production in the tannery on-site and using them to produce X-Biomer retanning agents fully automatically.

Lanxess had been running a pilot plant at Heller-Leder’s site in Hehlen, Lower Saxony, since 2017. The process has now been developed to market readiness and six different X-Biomer product types have been developed, with others in the pipeline, the company said.