Your phone is mainly made of plastics and metals.

The beverages you consume is

composed of flavors, natural and artificial. Even the perfume you once smelled and had never
forgotten was made up of components with different volatilities.

It’s easy to appreciate the process by which those elements add up to something so
useful. But there’s another story we don’t hear about -- how did we get our raw ingredients in
the first place, from the chaotic tangle of materials that is nature? The answer is a group of clever
hacks known as separation techniques which includes Crystallization, Filtration, Decantation,
Sublimation, Evaporation, Distillation, Chromatography, Centrifugation, Separation by Funnel,
Magnetic Separation, Precipitation and many more. I’m ____________, and this is Crash Course
Chemistry.

Separation techniques work by taking advantage of the fundamental properties of

things to disentangle them from each other. Simple separation techniques apply to many
physical scenarios like separating cream from milk, extracting water from soil or even sifting out
flecks of gold from river sand. But not all mixtures are so easy to unravel. In some of those cases,
we can exploit the differences between the physical properties within a mixture like particle size,
density, or boiling point to extract what's required. And one of these separation techniques is
what we called distillation.

HISTORY
Distillation could have been originated in Mesopotamia and Pakistan way back 4 th millennium
B.C. and was at first intended to produce essential oils like lavender and rose rather than alcohol.
And later on, the alchemist searching for the philosopher’s stone perfected distillation. They
made the first AQUA VITAE also known as “water of life” which supposed to bring longevity.

And from 1000 A.D., ABULCASIS an Arab surgeon, distillates wine, and later at the 12th century,
European alchemists perfected the process. Imagine before how alcohol is produced in very
small quantities and is only used for medication…

Distillation was conducted using apparatus similar to this. (PAUSE)

An aqueous solution was heated and the small droplets condensing on the lid were conveyed
towards the peripheral gutter. The solution in the main tank was hence more and more
concentrated.
PRINCIPLE AND CONCEPTS
Of all these history and origin, what exactly is distillation?

DISTILLATION is a physical process rather than a chemical reaction which uses different boiling
temperatures of the constituents to separate them from others.

For example, Water and Ethanol, both have corresponding boiling points of 100 degrees Celsius
and 78.4 degrees Celsius which make them the vital constituents of alcoholic distillation in the
RHUM AGRICOLE CONTEXT.

Have you wondered why rhum has its distinctive scent? Since the solution to be distilled contains
other constituents than ethanol and water, the distilled liquid contains some of these too. Some
constituents are undesirable, which happens to be methanol, others are highly sought as
aromatic components which gives rhum its distinctive perfume.

There are lots of Distillation Processes useful for different applications but the most commonly
used processes are IDEALIZED DISTILLATION MODEL, LABORATORY SCALE DISTILLATION,
AZEOTROPIC DISTILLATION, and INDUSTRIAL DISTILLATION.

In Idealized distillation model the boiling point of a liquid is the temperature at

which the vapor pressure of the liquid equals the pressure around the liquid,
enabling bubbles to form without being crushed.
It is a common misconception that in a liquid mixture at a given pressure, each
component boils at the boiling point corresponding to the given pressure and the
vapors of each component will collect separately and purely. This, however, does
not occur even in an idealized system.
It is not possible to completely purify a mixture of components by distillation, as
this would require each component in the mixture to have a zero partial pressure.

Under this, we have two types: BATCH or DIFFERENTIAL DISTILLATION and

CONTINUOUS DISTILLATION.
The difference? In a batch distillation, the concentration of the components is changing all
throughout the process opposed to continuous distillation wherein concentrations doesn’t
change over time.
LABORATORY SCALE DISTILLATIONs are almost exclusively run as batch distillations.
The device used is sometimes referred to as a still, consists at a minimum of a
reboiler or pot in which the source material is heated, a condenser in which the
heated vapor is cooled back to the liquid state, and a receiver in which the
concentrated or purified liquid, called the distillate, is collected. Several
laboratory scale techniques for distillation exist.

First, we have simple distillation, in which the vapor is immediately channeled into a condenser.
Consequently, the distillate is not pure but rather its composition is identical to the composition
of the vapors at the given temperature and pressure.

Take petroleum, a mixture of different hydrocarbons, some of these are valuable as fuels and
others make good raw materials for generating electric power. To separate them, experts relay
on one important feature. Different hydrocarbons boil at different temperatures. During the
boiling process, each type vaporizes at a precise point, then get separately funneled into a
container and collected as a liquid as it cools which lead on to our next type: Fractional
Distillation. It is used in order to separate the components by repeated vaporization-
condensation cycles with a packed fractionating column. This separation, by successive
distillations, is also referred to as rectification.

Third, we have Vacuum Distillation, This technique is also very useful for compounds
which boil beyond their decomposition temperature at atmospheric pressure and
which would therefore be decomposed by any attempt to boil them under
atmospheric pressure.

Lastly for Laboratory scale distillation, we have Short Path Distillation, a distillation
technique that involves the distillate travelling a short distance, often only a few
centimeters, and is normally done at reduced pressure. This technique is often
used for compounds which are unstable at high temperatures or to purify small
amounts of compound. A short path ensures that little compound is lost on the
sides of the apparatus.

Moving on, AZEOTROPIC DISTILLATION usually refers to the specific technique of

adding another component to generate a new, lower-boiling azeotrope that is
heterogeneous with the addition of benzene to water and ethanol.
As For Industrial distillation, it includes both batch and continuous fractional,
vacuum, azeotropic, extractive, and steam distillation in a large scale basis. The
most widely used industrial applications of continuous, steady-state fractional
distillation are in petroleum refineries, petrochemical and chemical plants and
natural gas processing plants wherein the "lightest" products, those with the lowest
boiling point, exit from the top of the columns and the "heaviest" products, those
with the highest boiling point, exit from the bottom of the column and are often
called the bottoms take place.

In fact, there are a bunch of distillation techniques to discover out in the world of
chemistry. But how do these really contribute in our everyday lives?

Here are some:

It is used in food processing. From natural ingredients, being hydrogenated and

distilled comes the flavors you taste – natural or artificial.

In perfumery, petals and spices, simply treated with alcohol, undergone the
process of distillation, gives you a luxurious bottle of Victoria’s Secret.

Distillation also took part in health and pharmaceutical industry. In fact, Capsules
and syrups were carefully modified, distilled from certain mixtures, repacked,
sealed, and distributed.

Not to mention, Sewage Treatment whereby waste water is freed of harmful

contents and rendered safe, so that it can be returned to the environment.

In this era of innovation, science and technology, what more can processes like
distillation can offer?