ABSTRACT
The discovery of crystalline zeolites and their loss of water on heating dates back to Swedish mineralogist, Baron Cronstedt in 1756. Between 1926 and 1948, approximately 30 papers appeared on zeolite adsorption. The most active research groups were under direction of Sameshima in Japan and Barrer in England. The commercial-scale use of molecular sieves by Union Carbide was in a system designed to remove oxygen from an argon stream to produce a high-purity argon product with less than 2 ppm oxygen. This chapter is intended to highlight what molecular sieves are, and how they are used. It is essentially nonmathematical and is oriented toward people in fields of both chemistry and chemical engineering. Molecular sieves also find extensive use in nonregenerative applications. In these cases, the adsorbents are simply thrown away after continuous exposure to the feedstreams for a prolonged period of time. Any treatment of novel separation by molecular sieves adsorption would be incomplete without some mention of economics.
