Therefore he named the material ‘zeolite’ which emerges from the classical Greek, where ζεω (zeo) means ‘to boil’ and λιθος (lithos) means ‘stone’ [1].
Nowadays, zeolites are available on a large scale and in a variety of applications.
The major use of zeolites is as ion exchangers in laundry detergents where they remove calcium and magnesium from water by exchanging it for sodium present in the zeolite.
Furthermore, zeolites are applied as adsorbents in the purification of gas streams to remove water and volatile organic
species,
and in the separation of different isomers and gas-mixtures,
moreover they are applied in the clean up of radioactive waste [2,3].
However, in this thesis the focus will entirely be on the application of zeolites as catalysts for the conversion of
hydrocarbons.