Adsorption, historical aspects

Historical Aspects. An early hypothesis of the physical structure of petroleum (Figure 10) (94) suggested that asphaltenes are the centers of micelles formed by adsorption or even by absorption of part of the maltene fraction, that is, resin material, onto the surfaces or into the... 

The scientific understanding of adsorption was significantly improved at the end of the nineteenth century with important contributions by Magnus (1853) and Weber (1872) about the dense gas film, by Lord Kelvin (1871) [25] about capillary condensation, and by de Sussure (1812) [26], who discovered that the adsorption is accompanied by heat formation. These developments resulted in the generally accepted definition of adsorption by Ostwald in 1885. More detailed descriptions of the historical aspects are summarized by Sing [27], Robens [28], and Bathen and Breitenbach [29]. 

This pioneering work shows that the chemisorption of even one of the reactants, CO, in the FTS is not a simple process. Since this work, the introduction of surface science instrumentation employing single crystals of metals active for FTS has led to hundreds of papers per year on CO adsorption and desorption, and many of these are concerned with the isotope exchange reaction of CO. While this is an important aspect of FTS and many of the studies utilize isotopes, this will not be covered since it represents a special area within the overall FTS. A historical view of the chemisorption of CO on surfaces has appeared recently. ... 

An overview of the field of polymer adsorption, including theoretical and general aspects, has been presented in Chapters 2 and 3. In historical terms it can be said that, while interest in the adsorption of polymers is now quite old (1), the development of interest in polyelectrolyte adsorption is more recent (2,3). This subject is treated in some detail (including the case where the adsorption interface is oppositely charged) in a recently published general treatise on the subject of polymer adsorption (3). 

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