Activated physical adsorption

The consequences of this type of activated physical adsorption is not only that the quantity adsorbed can lie off the isotherm but also that the measured quantity of adsorption is far less than the equilibrium value. No experiments have been conducted to illustrate whether or not the quantity adsorbed lies within the hysteresis loop. The occasional failure of the vacuum volumetric method to agree with the dynamic method, which is not subject to any pressure overshoot, may in part be attributed to this phenomenon. 

It was noted in Section XVII-1 that chemisorption may become slow at low temperatures so that even though it is favored thermodynamically, the only process actually observed may be that of physical adsorption. Such slowness implies an activation energy for chemisorption, and the nature of this effect has been much discussed. 

In contrast, physical adsorption is a very rapid process, so the rate is always controlled by mass transfer resistance rather than by the intrinsic adsorption kinetics. However, under certain conditions the combination of a diffiision-controUed process with an adsorption equiUbrium constant that varies according to equation 1 can give the appearance of activated adsorption. 

Adsorption of Radionuclides. Other appHcations that depend on physical adsorption include the control of krypton and xenon radionuchdes from nuclear power plants (92). The gases are not captured entirely, but their passage is delayed long enough to allow radioactive decay of the short-hved species. Highly rnicroporous coconut-based activated carbon is used for this service. 

Adsorption This is the most widely used of the physical-chemical treatment processes. It is used primarily for the removal of soluble organics with activated carbon serving as the adsorbent. Most liquid-phase-activated carbon adsorption reactions follow a Freundlich Isotherm [Eq. (25-21)]. 

In particular, emphasis will be placed on the use of chemisorption to measure the metal dispersion, metal area, or particle size of catalytically active metals supported on nonreducible oxides such as the refractory oxides, silica, alumina, silica-alumina, and zeolites. In contrast to physical adsorption, there are no complete books devoted to this aspect of catalyst characterization however, there is a chapter in Anderson that discusses the subject. 

Dimotakis, E. D., Cal, M. P., Economy, J., Rood, M. J. and Larson, S. M., Chemically treated activated carbon cloths for removal of volatile organic carbons from gas streams - evidence for enhanced physical adsorption. Environ. Sci. Technol., 1995, 29(7), 1876 1880. 

Activated carbon has the strongest physical adsorption forces or the highest volume of adsorbing porosity of any material known to mankind. 

Physical adsorption of oxygen resulting in the formation of one or more monolayers of oxide and requiring no activation energy. 

All these immobilization techniques run the risk of altering activity compared with the native enzyme. Improved activity is occasionally reported, but this is the exception. The immobilization techniques listed above are in approximate order of loss in activity. Physical entrapment normally causes no change. Adsorption will distort the shape of the molecule compared with the native... 

Adsorption of ions from the solution. There are two types of ionic adsorption from solutions onto electrode surfaces an electrostatic (physical) adsorption under the effect of the charge on the metal surface, and a specific adsorption (chemisorption) under the effect of chemical (nonelectrostatic) forces. Specifically adsorbing ions are called surface active. Specific adsorption is more pronounced with anions. 

Barometric chemisorption. Chemisorption on catalysts is measured routinely by the barometric method. The equipment is very similar to that commonly used in texture determination by physical adsorption (see Section 3.6.2), except that for chemisorption measurements facilities for pretreatment of the samples should be present. In particular for metal catalysts often the catalyst is received in a partly or fully oxidized form and, as a consequence, reduction is required when one wants to measure the amount of active sites. Moreover, during storage adsorption of various molecules might occur and evacuation is... 

For an oxidized surface, the value of y is 10" - 1.7-10 and it decreases with increasing the experimental temperature. In this case the activation energy of a change in yis 2.1 kcal/mole. From these data it can be inferred that the heterogeneous de-excitation of singlet oxygen proceeds in terms of the physical adsorption mechanism similar to that described for glass. 

The adsorption action of activated carbon may be explained in terms of the surface tension (or energy per unit surface area) exhibited by the activated particles whose specific surface area is very large. The molecules on the surface of the particles are subjected to unbalanced forces due to unsatisfied bonds and this is responsible for the attachment of other molecules to the surface. The attractive forces are, however, relatively weak and short range, and are called Van der Waals forces, and the adsorption process under these conditions is termed as a physical adsorption (physisorption) process. In this case, the adsorbed molecules are readily desorbed from the surface. Adsorption resulting from chemical interaction with surface molecules is termed as chemisorption. In contrast to the physical process described for the adsorption on carbon, the chemisorption process is characterized by stronger forces and irreversibility. It may, however, be mentioned that many adsorption phenomena involve both physical and chemical processes. They are, therefore, not easily classified, and the general term, sorption, is used to designate the mechanism of the process. 

There is further emphasis on adsorption isotherms, the nature of the adsorption process, with measurements of heats of adsorption providing evidence for different adsorption processes - physical adsorption and activated adsorption -and surface mobility. We see the emergence of physics-based experimental methods for the study of adsorption, with Becker at Bell Telephone Laboratories applying thermionic emission methods and work function changes for alkali metal adsorption on tungsten. 

Of special interest in liquid dispersions are the surface-active agents that tend to accumulate at air/ liquid, liquid/liquid, and/or solid/liquid interfaces. Surfactants can arrange themselves to form a coherent film surrounding the dispersed droplets (in emulsions) or suspended particles (in suspensions). This process is an oriented physical adsorption. Adsorption at the interface tends to increase with increasing thermodynamic activity of the surfactant in solution until a complete monolayer is formed at the interface or until the active sites are saturated with surfactant molecules. Also, a multilayer of adsorbed surfactant molecules may occur, resulting in more complex adsorption isotherms. 

As noted above, adsorption isotherms are largely derived empirically and give no information on the types of adsorption that may be involved. Scrivner and colleagues39 have developed an adsorption model for montmorillonite clay that can predict the exchange of binary and ternary ions in solution (two and three ions in the chemical system). This model would be more relevant for modeling the behavior of heavy metals that actively participate in ion-exchange reactions than for organics, in which physical adsorption is more important. 

The competitive physical/chemical system that is being installed at Rosemount, Minn., consists of primary treatment followed by coagulation, sand filtration, activated carbon adsorption, another filtration step, ion exchange, and oxidation. This can produce a highly purified water at less cost than a system involving primary, secondary, and tertiary treatment.30... 

Li, Y. and Kim, S.J. (2005) Synthesis and characterization of nano titania particles embedded in mesoporous silica with both high photocatalytic activity and adsorption capability. Journal of Physical Chemistry B, 109, 12309-12315. 

A third empirical criterion is based on the effect of temperature on the amount adsorbed. For physical adsorption the amount of gas adsorbed always decreases monotonically as the temperature is increased. Significant amounts of physical adsorption should not occur at temperatures in excess of the normal boiling point at the operating pressure. Appreciable chemisorption can occur at temperatures above the boiling point and even above the critical temperature of the material. Because chemisorption can be an activated process that takes place at a slow rate, it may be difficult to determine the amount of chemisorption corresponding to true equilibrium. Moreover, the process may not be reversible. It is also possible for two or more types of chemisorption or for chemical and physical adsorption to occur simultaneously on the same surface. These facts make it difficult to generalize with regard to the effect of temperature on the amount adsorbed. Different behavior will be observed for different adsorbent-adsorbate systems. 

Effect of temperature on amount adsorbed for simultaneous physical adsorption and activated chemisorption. (Adapted from Chemical Engineering Kinetics by J. M. Smith. Copyright 1970. Used with permission of McGraw-Hill Book Company.)... 

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