Modeling of type IV and V sigmoidal adsorption isotherms

Abstract

Based on the biochemical theory of multiple ligand–receptor complexes (Klotz (1946)) a sigmoidal proceeding adsorption isotherm is derived. The special case of an arbitrarily large number of equal interaction sites and a separate one yields an equation which corresponds to the ζ-isotherm, disparately derived by Ward et al. (2007) for surface tension of solid—fluid interfaces. From the mathematical point of view it is analogous to the BET-isotherm for a limited number of adsorption layers (1938). It is shown that the isotherm maps type IV and V isotherms. The isotherm is compared with others including the type IV isotherm of Do and Do (2009). The present isotherm is unified in contrast to existing hybrid models. It is successfully applied to numerous literature data concerning the adsorption of water on microporous carbon and aluminophosphate molecular sieves.