In the production of drinking water, the focus is increasingly on the removal of toxic trace impurities, particularly arsenic. The Business Unit Ion Exchange Resins has developed a product that can reliably remove this toxic metalloid from drinking water:

Lewatit FO36 is an innovative hybrid adsorber consisting of a combination of a polymeric anion exchange resin and an iron oxide with a goethite structure. The iron oxide is distributed in the pores of the weakly basic ion exchange resin in a layer a few nanometers thick by a special production process.

This fine, highly reactive iron oxide layer can selectively adsorb the arsenic. Because, unlike the other anionic components of water such as chloride, nitrate, sulfate and carbonate, only arsenic has this high affinity to the iron oxide surface, and is thus the only substance to be adsorbed. The other mineral components – some of them valuable – remain in the drinking water.

Health studies show that the arsenic absorbed by the human body through the long-term consumption of contaminated drinking water has the potential to cause cancer or skin problems, even in concentrations of just a few ppb (parts per billion).