Dow Liquid Separations provides FILMTEC™ reverse osmosis membranes and DOWEX ion exchange resins to meet global needs for water treatment, as well as specialized applications in industries including pharmaceuticals, fine chemicals, chemical processing, mining, catalysts, sweeteners, beverage and dairy processing, and more.
DOWEX Ion Exchange Resins-Powerful Chemical Processing Tools
Dow Liquid Separations offers a complete line of FILMTECâ„¢ reverse osmosis elements and DOWEX ion exchange resins to meet the needs for water treatment and specialty Applications.
DOWEX Ion Exchange Resins and FILMTEC™ Membranes
Matching your specialized need to a viable, cost-effective sustainable solution is what we do. It`s match making, really. And it takes Dow`s problem solving experts who consider your product, your process and your economics to create a custom solution that matches your needs.
Biotech/Pharma and Fine Chemicals
A wide variety of commercial products are being manufactured today through a fermentation process. These range from animal grade amino acids, food and chemical grades of organic acids, food and flavor components, fine chemicals, vitamins and pharmaceuticals. One of the challenges in manufacturing products made by a fermentation process is the recovery, isolation and concentration of the target product from a fermentation broth. In fact, the potential commercial viability of many products as produced from a fermentation or biochemical process has been cited to be dependent upon a successful recovery and purification process. DOWEX ion exchange and adsorbent resins offer an array of solutions for separation problems. Additional information is available on selecting a resin for the isolation or purification of a biochemical.
Chemical Processing
Synthetic ion exchange resins have found application in a number of chemical processing applications.
Mining and Mineral Processing
The Dow Chemical Company has decades of mineral processing experience with ion exchange resins and has a keen focus on mining and hydrometallurgical applications. Today, DOWEX resins play key roles in a number of applications including uranium mining, zinc mining, cobalt refining, chromium plating, chromate and perchlorate removal from groundwater and radioactive groundwater remediation. Dow continues to be extremely active in development efforts for new methods for primary metal separations in gold, copper, and nickel mining to ensure new resins and innovative processing technologies will be available for the hydrometallurgical processing industry in the coming years.
Catalysis of Organic Reactions
DOWEX Catalysts are high capacity, immobilized acids and bases that have many advantages over homogeneous processes. Heterogeneous catalysts offer:
- Excellent capacity equivalent to 2M acid
- Ease of separation by simple filtration
- Acid neutralization eliminated
- Fixed bed reactors under better temperature and contact time control
- Polymer matrix excludes larger molecules (>1500-2000 MW) from further reaction
- Product selectivity often increases
Sweetening Applications
Dow provides a wide variety of resins designed specifically for sweetener applications. These resins are used as an integral part of corn syrup, high-fructose corn syrup processing and other starch based syrups. They are also used extensively in many other sweetener feed streams. In sucrose processing the resins are often used for softening feed streams, recovering sugar from molasses streams, or decolorization. They are also used in the production of non-nutritive sweeteners such as sorbitol or mannitol.
Beverage Processing
- Grape Juice
- Apple and Pear Juices
- Pineapple Juice
- Orange Juice
- Wine Must
Ion exchange and adsorbent resins are used to partially purify or enhance a beverage or food process stream. They can be used to control acidity, color, odor, salt content, flavor, shelf life or a combination of these characteristics, and are especially useful.
Resins can also be used to isolate and purify a number of additive products like amino acids (MSG, L-lysine, etc.) or flavor components like nucleosides. A summary on Strategies in Selecting a Resin for a Juice, Beverage, or Food Application is available.
Dow offers a wide selection of resins that meet ISO 9002 Certification Manufacturing Standards and FDA 21CFR173.25 Food Contacting Regulations. Resins will require a cross regeneration of some type before being placed into service as FDA 21CFR173.25 readied materials.
Food & Dairy
FILMTEC™ membranes from Dow Liquid Separations are used to process a wide variety of food, dairy, and sweetener streams. Most applications involve product concentration and/or fractionation. For example, whey processors use FILMTEC reverse osmosis membranes to concentrate lactose in UF permeate streams.
Protein and sugar concentrations are also very common. FILMTEC nanofiltration membranes are used to remove both water and salt from a product stream to add value.
