Adsorption

From GAWDAwiki

Adsorption, or surface assimilation, is the accumulation of molecules of a gas to form a thin film on the surface of a solid.^[1]

The binding to the surface is usually weak and reversible. Just about anything including the fluid that dissolves or suspends the material of interest is bound, but compounds with color and those that have taste or odor tend to bind strongly. Compounds that contain chromogenic groups (atomic arrangements that vibrate at frequencies in the visible spectrum) very often are strongly adsorbed on activated carbon. Decolorization can be wonderfully efficient by adsorption and with negligible loss of other materials. ^[2]

References

1. http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=adsorption
2. http://www.rpi.edu/dept/chem-eng/Biotech-Environ/Adsorb/adsorb.htm