**5. Conclusions and future prospects**

A lot of scientific research was performed in order to study and understand the process of sorption of phenolic compounds. This chapter presents the complexity of this process and shows how many different factors have influence on it. The starting point is chemical structure and overview of physical and chemical properties of phenol and its ring-substituted derivatives. This characteristic is the basis to explain the behavior of the molecules in solution and during sorption. Next, the way phenols interact with the most popular sorbents are shortly described. Finally, factors influencing the sorption process were characterized.

Factors promoting the sorption:


Factors hindering the sorption:


Irreversibility of phenols adsorption can be the result of


Although so many works were devoted to studies on phenols sorption, the general mechanism of the process is still not fully understood and explained. There are some issues and unsolved problems requiring further investigations:

