Distillation

Description

Distillation is a unit operation in chemistry that involves the separation of components in a liquid mixture based on their differences in boiling points. It is one of the most widely used and fundamental techniques for separating and purifying liquids in various industries, including chemical processing, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, and the production of alcoholic beverages.

By continuously repeating the distillation process or using a fractional distillation setup, it is possible to achieve a higher degree of separation between the components in the mixture.

The success of distillation as a separation technique relies on the fact that each component in the mixture has a unique boiling point. As the mixture is heated, the component with the lowest boiling point vaporizes first and can be collected separately. The remaining liquid in the distillation flask will then have a different composition, with a higher concentration of the higher boiling point component. This process is repeated until the desired level of separation is achieved.