Effect of the degree of crosslinking on the selectivity of ion‐exchange resins

Abstract Most of the literature states that increasing the degree of crosslinking of an ion‐exchange resin increases the selectivity of the resin for the preferred ion. Further examination of the data for ions where complex formation is insignificant suggests that such generalisations are frequently invalid. The effect of the degree of crosslinking on the selectivity for divalent over univalent ions is trivial over the range of crosslinking from 1 to 16% divinylbenzene in cation exchange resins based on sulphonated polystyrene. Similar behaviour holds for anion exchange systems.