Expressiveness of adsorption measurements for characterization of zeolitic materials - A review

This critical review concerns the author's results and experience in adsorption studies on molecular sieves comprising crystalline microporous aluminosilicates and aluminophosphates as well as amorphous mesoporous aluminosilicates. The discussion is mainly based on three distinctly different standard adsorbates: nitrogen, benzene, and water. The highlights or advantages and the shortcomings or limitations are considered from the points of view of the experimental procedures and expressiveness or concluding. The results are compared to several other zeolitic materials and adsorbates. Adsorption technique is a valuable tool for characterization of the molecular sieves. Since the measurements are very sensitive to modification of the materials, the investigations require sufficiently thorough procedures and the results a careful interpretation. A comparison between the results for larger series of materials yields valuable conclusions that are much more expressive than those from a single measurement or material.