Pharmaceuticals:
Surface area and porosity play major roles in the purification, processing, blending, tableting, and packaging of pharmaceutical products.
Ceramics:
Surface area and porosity affect the curing and bonding of greenware and influence strength, texture, appearance, and density of finished goods.
Adsorbents:
Knowledge of surface area, total pore volume, and pore size distribution is important for quality control of industrial adsorbents and in the development of separation processes.
Activated Carbons:
Surface area and porosity must be optimized within narrow ranges to accomplish gasoline vapor recovery in automobiles, solvent recovery in painting operations, or pollution controls in wastewater management.
Carbon Black:
The wear lifetime, traction,and performance of tires are related to the surface area of carbon blacks used in their production.
Fuel Cells:
Fuel cell electrodes require high surface area with controlled porosity to produce optimum power density.
Catalyst:
The active surface area and pore structure of catalysts influence production rates. Limiting the pore size allows only molecules of desired sizes to enter and exit.
Paints and Coatings:
The surface area of a pigment or filler influences the gloss, texture, color, color saturation, brightness,solids content, and film adhesion properties.
Projectile Propellant:
The burn rate of propellants is a function of surface area too high a rate can be dangerous; too low a rate can cause malfunction and inaccuracy.
Medical Implants:
Controlling the porosity of artificial bone allows it to imitate real bone that the body will accept and allow tissue to be grown around it.
Electronics:
By selecting high surface area material, manufacturers of super-capacitors can minimize the use of costly raw materials while providing more exposed surface area for storage of charge.
Cosmetics:
Surface area is often used by cosmetic manufacturers as a predictor of particle size when agglomeration tendencies of the fine powders make analysis with a particle-sizing instrument difficult.
Aerospace:
Surface area and porosity of heat shields and insulating materials affect weight and function.
Geoscience:
Porosity is important in groundwater hydrology and petroleum exploration because it relates to the quantity of fluid that a structure can contain.
Nanotubes:
Nanotube surface area and microporosity are used to predict the capacity of a material to store hydrogen.