The high purchasing price of organic solvents has stimulated interest in their recovery from emissions. While conventional adsorption units for recovery of monosolvents have been in industrial use for some 70 years, it has hitherto proved impossible to costeffectively desorb solvent fractions sufficiently pure for direct use in the case of emissions of mixtures. The solvent mixtures obtained by desorption had to be separated in expensive rectification steps, with the high costs thus precluding widespread use of adsorption for recovery projects in the chemical and printing industries. After conclusion of development work performed in the USA and Germany over a period of 10 years, it is now possible to control the adsorption steps in such a way that the purities necessary for reutilisation of the individual solvent fractions can be attained without the aid of rectification steps.