Design of Fractionation Columns

Distillation is a physical process used to separate a fluid mixture of two (binary) or more (multicomponent) substances into its component parts. In most cases, the components to be separated are miscible liquids with different volatilities and boiling points. This separation process is a thermal unit operation that utilizes the differences of vapour pressure to produce the separa‐ tion. In this process, the vapour or liquid mixture is heated whereby the more volatile components are evaporated, condensed and allowed to drip or drip apart, i.e. distil or destillare, as it was originally called in Latin. It is from this fact of ‘Dripping’ that the name of the distillation process was derived.