Publisher's Synopsis
This book presents a unified description of physical adsorption on heterogeneous solids from both the gas and liquid phases. All solid adsorbents of great practical importance, such as activated carbons, silica gels, aluminium oxides, zeolites, etc., possess surface and structural heterogeneities, which play a dominant role in the adsorption process especially at low pressures. The assumption of adsorbent heterogeneity in studies of physical adsorption introduces considerable difficulties in the theoretical description of this phenomenon. To overcome this problem, the authors have presented a relatively simple theory of physical adsorption on heterogeneous solids, which provides a quantitative description of this phenomenon and simultaneously permits elaboration of methods for characterizing adsorbent heterogeneity. The chapter on single-gas adsorption on heterogeneous surfaces is the most extensive one in the book because there is a great deal of scientific literature concerning this problem. Moreoever, the theory of single-gas adsorption provides foundations for deriving equations that apply to adsorption from multicomponent gas and liquid mixtures.
