What is the most adsorbent material?

What is the difference between an adsorbent and an absorbent?

• Answer:

  A material said to be absorbent indicates its ability to carry a certain amount of liquid in its interstice, or little chamber like in a sponge. In the case of a textile fabric, the yarn itself can act like a mini sponge. Also the space between the yarns can be sufficiently tight to trap water and immobilize it due to the surface tension of the water. Yarns of fabric can be made to create additional "traps" for water by brushing. Now, what about adsorption, with a "d"? The word adsorption was introduced to illustrate the concept of ''chemical absorption'' which occurs when a substance is caught either in nanopores or to the surface of a substrate by low energy (Van der Waal Forces). This is the principle used for activated carbon filter where billions of tiny pores will clean contaminants from a passing fluid. These contaminants can be extracted fairly easily by a steam process. The more one tries to explain the difference between absorption and adsorption, the more it appears that both concepts are in fact very similar. The main difference is that adsorption refers to trapping substances on a nanometric scale (1X10-9). check this site for more: http://tri-sis.ca/absorbent.html jovie