Pumice is a glassy porous rock of volcanic origin. Its rigid solid foam-like structure makes it a rather unique natural material and, not surprisingly, there has been significant effort made to find useful applications for the material. Currently it is used on a reasonable scale in the production of light weight concrete, and there is a steady but small market as an abrasive. In principle the material has technical potential as a separation medium and sorbent, and as a support for catalysts in industrial processes. In this context there is a reasonable amount of published work in the patent and open literature but as far as we are aware there is no review available of these efforts. This publication aims to remedy this omission, and after a short introduction explaining the structure and origin of pumice, goes on to describe its application in industrial separation processes, as a sorbent of organic and inorganic materials, and its use as a catalyst support in a wide variety of primarily organic chemical synthetic processes. The review concludes with some speculation regarding the best prospects for exploitation of pumice materials in chemical processes.