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2.2 Historical Aspects 39

Table 2.3

Brief history of adsorption (Dabro 2001) wski,
Scientist(s) Name(s) Breakthrough Year
C. W. Scheele, Experiments on the uptake of gases by charcoal and 1773–1777
F. Fontana clays
T. Lowitz Decolorization of tartaric acid utilizing charcoal 1776–1778
D. M. K ehl Application of carbons of animal origin for the remo al v 1793
of colors from sugarThe English sugar industry used .
charcoal as a decolorization agent in 1794
T. de Saussure Systematic studies on adsorption. He disco ered the v 1814
exothermic character of adsorption
H. Kayser Introduced the term “adsorption” 1881
Van Bemmelen The Freundlich equation was first proposed by v an 1888
H. Freundlich Bemmelen and popularized by Freundlich
R. Von Ostreyko Set the basis for the commercial de v elopment 1901
of activated carbons
M. S. Tswett Discovered selective adsorption. He used the term and 1903
technology of “column solid–liquid adsorption
chromatography”
J. Dewar Found selective adsorption of oxygen from a mixture 1904
with nitrogen, during the uptake of air by charcoal
W. A. Zelinsky v Applied the use of actie carbons as an adsorption 1915
medium in a gas mask for the needs of ar I orld W W
I. Langmuir Derived the concept of monolayer adsorption, formed 1918
on energetically homogeneous solid surfas awarded aces.W
the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1932
S. Brunauer The milestone in the deelopment of adsorption v 1938
P. H. Emmet, science was the multilayer isotherm equation,
E. Teller known as BET
A. J. P. Martin Introduced to laboratory practice the solid–liquid 1941
B. L. M. Synge partition chromatography, both in column and planar form
R. M. Barrer Invented the method of zeolite synthesis. In the 1956
D. W. Breck same year, the North-American Linde Compan y
started the production of synthetic zeolites on a
commercial scale

obtained were not published for some years due to reasons of conf Afterw . ards, identiality
v
,
there was a rapid deelopment of ion-exchange materials and methods (Luc 2003). A y
brief history of ion exchange is presented in T able 2.4.
2.2.3 Catalysis

Catalysis is not a new phenomenon, but its intentional utilization by humans has be gun
only in this century. One of the first catalytic processes was probably the fermentation of
fruits to obtain alcoholic beverages. Enzymes found in yeast were used as catalysts for the
conversion of sugar into alcohol. In fact, ancient Sumerians described beer preparation on