The heart of Chemical process

The heart of Chemical process

Distillation is a process ofseparating the component substances from a liquidmixture by selectiveevaporation andcondensation. Distillation may result in essentially complete separation (nearly pure components), or it may be a partial separation that increases the concentration of selected components of the mixture. In either case the process exploits differences in thevolatility of mixture's components. Inindustrial chemistry, distillation is aunit operation of practically universal importance, but it is a physical separation process and not achemical reaction. Commercially, distillation has many applications. For example: In the fossil fuel industry distillation is a major class of operation in obtaining materials fromcrude oil for fuels and for chemicalfeedstocks. Distillation permits separation of air into its components — notablyoxygen,nitrogen, andargon — forindustrial use. In the field of industrial chemistry, large ranges of crude liquid products ofchemical synthesis are distilled to separate them, either from other products, or from impurities, or from unreacted starting materials. Distillation offermented products producesdistilled beverages with a high alcohol content, or separates out other fermentation products of commercial value. An installation for distillation, especially of alcohol, is adistillery. The distillation equipment is astill.