Adsorption of volatile organic compounds in pillared clays: Estimation of the separation factor by a method derived from the Dubinin-Radushkevich equation

In this work the results of adsorption of selected volatile organic compounds (VOCs), namely, methanol, acetone, methyl ethyl ketone, 1,1,1-trichloroethane, and trichloroethylene, in pillared clays are analyzed by a model recently proposed to estimate the separation factor of a selected pair of molecules in a given adsorbent. Although the precise design of the process of selective adsorption of VOCs would need more elaborated methodologies, the present model has the advantage of being developed for microporous adsorbents, the parameters and the calculations involved are accessible, and, in this way, it could provide useful information to material scientists during the work of optimization of the adsorption properties of a given adsorbent for a particular system that involves adsorption and/or recovering of noxious volatile organic compounds.