5. Conclusion

There's no risk of being contradicted if we emphasize the marvellous nature of the history of zeolites. A story that began underground, with zeolite crystals forming with infinite slowness, a synthesis that man has long dreamed of imitating. After a century of in vain efforts, the first zeolite was successfully synthesized in the 1940s by Barrer, the first step towards numerous other zeolites and the search for industrial applications, first in molecular sieving separation and adsorption purification, then in catalysis and cation exchange. The years that followed saw an almost exponential growth in the synthesis of new zeolites and applications in these three fields.

The reasons for this development are well known:

• the positive economic and environmental impact of replacing conventional separation (such as distillation)...