Insights into the modeling of adsorption isotherm systems

Concern about environmental protection has increased over the years from a global viewpoint. To date, the prevalence of adsorption separation in the environmental chemistry remains an aesthetic attention and consideration abroad the nations, owning to its low initial cost, simplicity of design, ease of operation, insensitivity to toxic substances and complete removal of pollutants even from dilute solutions. With the renaissance of isotherms modeling, there has been a steadily growing interest in this research field. Confirming the assertion, this paper presents a state of art review of adsorption isotherms modeling, its fundamental characteristics and mathematical derivations. Moreover, the key advance of the error functions, its utilization principles together with the comparisons of linearized and non-linearized isotherm models have been highlighted and discussed. Conclusively, the expanding of the nonlinear isotherms represents a potentially viable and powerful tool, leading to the superior improvement in the area of adsorption science. (C) 2009 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.