During recent decades zeolites and related molecular sieve materials have proved remarkably successful in various branches of chemistry and chemical engineering. Perhaps the most striking progress has been achieved in the application of zeolites as catalysts. Important advantages of zeolites over more conventional porous solids are their high density and strength of acid sites, the availability of numerous techniques for chemical modifications, and their thermal stability. Moreover, with the advent of molecular sieve materials, the door was opened to shape-selective catalysis, which led to a number of new catalytic processes. Today, zeolites can be tailored for a wide variety of catalytic applications. It is therefore not surprising that catalysis on zeolites is among the major research topics in almost all industrialized countries. About 15 years ago, the European socialist countries, in an attempt to coordinate and intensify their efforts in the field of zeolite catalysis, founded a coordination council, and this book is a stateof-the-art report on the achievements of this multinational cooperation.
The book contains 17 chapters written by experts from Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Hungafy, Poland and the Soviet Union. About twothirds of these chapters focus on non-catalytic aspects of zeolite science, e.g., quantum chemical studies, hydrothermal synthesis, spectroscopic characterization, and chemical procedures for modifying zeolites such as ultrastabilization and dealumination at high temperatures by gaseous reactants such as SiC14, or isomorphous substitution of silicon and aluminum by transition metals. An excellent