Distillation: history, theory, and practice

Definition and purpose of distillation

Distillation (also called classical distillation) is the process of separating the component substances of a liquid mixture of two or more chemically distinct substances by selectively boiling the mixture and then condensing the resulting vapors in a still. The separation works because components have different relative volatilities, so the vapor phase becomes enriched in more volatile components while the remaining liquid (the bottoms) becomes enriched in less volatile components. The purpose of distillation is to obtain high-purity separated chemicals in a convenient, time-tested way, and it can be run across a wide range of pressures and feed compositions. In industrial settings, distillation is typically treated as a physical unit operation (not a chemical reaction), and it is used for applications such as producing alcoholic beverages, desalination, crude oil stabilization, refining fuels and chemical feedstocks, and cryogenic air separation into oxygen, nitrogen, and argon.

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Selective boiling and vapor condensation mechanism

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