Fractal approach of adsorption from liquid mixtures on silica gel

The analysis of adsorption from binary liquid mixtures on silica gels in terms of the fractal geometry approach has been presented. This analysis is based on the relationship between monolayer surface phase capacity and molecular cross area of the preferentially adsorbed component of binary mixtures: aliphatic alcohol (1)+benzene (2) and aliphatic ketone (1)+benzene (2). It has been proved that the linear form of Langmuir–Freundlich (LF) isotherm is proper to calculate the capacity of the surface phase. The surface fractal dimension for the preferentially adsorbed compounds (i.e. alcohols or ketones) was calculated by using linear equation proposed by Pfeifer and Avnir (PA). All calculations were made assuming the linear regression model and within it making a statistical analysis of the errors resulting from using these equations. In terms of the proposed approach we can obtain reliable values of surface fractal dimensions D, that lie in the interval: 2<D<3.