Organic solids, surface acidity basicity

For decades such adsorption had been assumed to involve dipole interactions and interacting sites were termed "polar." It is quite clear in the above studies that dipoles in the polymers and in the solid surfaces do not contribute measurably to adsorption. Even from carbon tetrachloride, the solvent most favorable to adsorption, the amount of basic polymer (PMMA) that adsorbed onto basic calcium carbonate was only 2.5% of the amount that adsorbed on the same area of silica surface. Similarly, the amount of acidic polymer (CPVC) that adsorbed onto the acidic silica from any of the six solvents was less than 0.2% of the amount that adsorbed from carbon tetrachloride or dichloromethane onto the same area of basic calcium carbonate. It is concluded that adsorption of organic acids or bases from neutral organic solvents onto inorganic solids is governed entirely by acid-base interactions and is quite independent of dipole phenomena. It is therefore proposed that heats of adsorption are actually enthalpies of acid-base interaction and should therefore be subject to the Drago correlation ... 

Other important organic electrolytes are the dye molecules. The adsorption of dyes is of interest largely because they are pollutants frequently found in textile wastewaters and because some of them were proposed as molecular probes to characterize the pore texture of carbon adsorbents. However, this last apphcation should be viewed with caution [1] because dye adsorption is profoundly affected by the carbon surface chemistry and solution pH. Thus, Graham [40] found a good linear relationship between a decreased uptake of the anionic metanil yellow and an increased carbon surface acidity. This author concluded that acidic groups on the carbon surface tend to reduce the capacity for anionic adsorbates in general. The adsorption of dyes was subsequendy investigated by other authors [1]. For instance, Nandi and Walker [41] studied the adsorption of acid and basic dyes on different carbon materials and found that the area covered by a dye molecule depended on the nature of the solid surface. 

An important contribution to the problem is made in a paper by Muller, Radke, and Prausnitz who present a new theoretical model for the adsorption of weak organic electrolytes on activated carbon. Unlike previous models the theory takes into account surface heterogeneity and the effect of pH on surface charge. The solid surface is assumed to consist of three types of adsorption site, neutral, basic, and acidic, the relative proportions of which vary with pH and are characterized by q, the surface charge density per unit area. This is related to the surface potential i/ o by simple diffuse double-layer theory, assuming that the surface charge is balanced only by the counter charge of the double layer. 

Acid-base properties of oxide surfaces are employed in many fields and their relationship with PZC has been often invoked. Adsorption and displacement of different organic molecules from gas phase was proposed as a tool to characterize acid-base properties of dry ZnO and MgO [341]. Hammet acidity functions were used as a measure of acid-base strength of oxides and some salts [342]. Acidity and basicity were determined by titration with 1-butylamine and trichloroacetic acid in benzene using indicators of different pAg. There is no simple correlation between these results and the PZC. Acid-base properties of surfaces have been derived from IR spectra of vapors of probe acids or bases, e.g. pyridine [343] adsorbed on these surfaces. The correlation between Gibbs energy of adsorption of organic solvents on oxides calculated from results obtained by means of inverse gas chromatography and the acceptor and donor ability of these solvents was too poor to use this method to characterize the donor-acceptor properties of the solids [344],... 

This paper describes a new synthesis strategy of preparing thermally stable mesostructured transition metal oxides, namely, two-step synthesis (TSS). Basically, the synthesis course involves two steps (1) formation of a mesostructured transition metal oxide solid mediated by surfactant in a basic aqueous solution and (2) treatment of the solid product in an acidic organic solvent containing the respective precursor from which the solid product was produced. The final material synthesized according to such a method is thermally stable and structurally mesoporous with high surface area and uniform pores arranged disorderedly. 

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