Continuous Distillation - Industrial Application

Industrial Application

Distillation is one of the unit operations of chemical engineering. Continuous distillation is used widely in the chemical process industries where large quantities of liquids have to be distilled. Such industries are the natural gas processing, petrochemical production, coal tar processing, liquor production, liquified air separation, hydrocarbon solvents production and similar industries, but it finds its widest application in petroleum refineries. In such refineries, the crude oil feedstock is a very complex multicomponent mixture that must be separated and yields of pure chemical compounds are not expected, only groups of compounds within a relatively small range of boiling points, which are called fractions. These fractions are the origin of the term fractional distillation or fractionation. It is often not worthwhile separating the components in these fractions any further based on product requirements and economics.

Industrial distillation is typically performed in large, vertical cylindrical columns (as shown in images 1 and 2) known as "distillation towers" or "distillation columns" with diameters ranging from about 65 centimeters to 11 meters and heights ranging from about 6 meters to 60 meters or more.