Page 4 - Adsorption Technology & Design, Elsevier (1998)

1

The development of

adsorption technology

1.1 INTRODUCTION

The ability of some solids to remove colour from solutions containing dyes
has been known for over a century. Similarly, air contaminated with
unpleasant odours could be rendered odourless by passage of the air though
a vessel containing charcoal. Although such phenomena were not well
understood prior to the early twentieth century, they represent the dawning
of adsorption technology which has survived as a means of purifying and
separating both gases and liquids to the present day. Indeed, the subject is
continually advancing as new and improved applications occur in competi-
tion with other well-established process technologies, such as distillation
and absorption.
Attempts at understanding how solutions containing dyes could be
bleached, or how obnoxious smells could be removed from air streams, led
to quantitative measurements of the concentration of adsorbable com-
ponents in gases and liquids before and after treatment with the solid used
for such purposes. The classical experiments of several scientists including
Brunauer, Emmett and Teller, McBain and Bakr, Langmuir, and later by
Barrer, all in the early part of the twentieth century, shed light on the
manner in which solids removed contaminants from gases and liquids. As a
result of these important original studies, quantitative theories emerged