In industry, recovery and purification of the desired end product is a crucial step in the production of many chemicals, arguably as important as the synthesis itself. The cost of separation and purification often contributes a large part of the total production cost. Selection of the appropriate separation technique and optimization of the purification process are hence of critical importance. Adsorption has been used since history for the purification and separation of both gaseous and liquid streams. Sand filtration is known since ancient times and is one of the first examples of human water treatment. Even though the exact nature and mechanism of adsorption processes have long not been well understood, adsorption has been used for a huge variety of applications through all of human history. The separation of dyes, contaminant removal from water, decolorization of sugars, and recovery of fermented products are only a few examples. Nearly every modern‐day industrial chemical‐manufacturing process requires some form of separation in general and adsorption in specific. For instance, every catalytic reaction on a solid catalyst is characterized by an adsorption step, potentially rate determining.
In this article, the basic fundamentals of adsorption, the different adsorbent types and process modes, and a selection of the most relevant industrial adsorptive separations are discussed.