What is Zeolite?

Zeolites (Greek, zein, "to boil"; lithos, "a stone") are minerals that have a micro-porous structure. The term was originally coined in the 18th century by a Swedish mineralogist Axel Fredrik Cronstedt who observed, upon rapidly heatingthis natural mineral, that the stones began to dance about as the water evaporated. Using the Greek words which mean "stone that boils", he called this material zeolite.

More than 1500 zeolite types have been synthesized and 48 naturally occurring zeolites are known.

Natural zeolites form where volcanic rocks and ash layers react with alkaline groundwater. Zeolites also crystallized in post-depositional environments over periods ranging from thousands to millions of years in shallow marine basins. Naturally occurring zeolites are rarely pure and are contaminated to varying degrees by other minerals, metals, quartz or other zeolites. For this reason, naturally occurring zeolites are excluded from many important commercial applications where uniformity and purity are essential.

Zeolites are widely used as ion-exchange beds in domestic and commercial water purification, softening, and other applications. In chemistry, zeolites are used to separate molecules (only molecules of certain sizes and shapes can pass through), as traps for molecules so they can be analyzed.

Zeolite-based oxygen generation systems are widely used to produce medical grade oxygen. The zeolite is used as a molecular sieve to create purified oxygen from air, in a process involving the absorption of undesired gases, leaving highly purified oxygen and up to 5% argon. Source