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The distillation process is very old. The earliest evidence of the distillation process dates to around 1200 BCE. A cuneiform Akkadian tablet describes a primitive form of distillation. It is possible that distillation dates back before Babylonians and maybe was known to the Sumerians. However, the process was also practiced elsewhere in the world such as in ancient India, Pakistan, Egypt, and China around the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. Evidence suggests that ancient peoples used the distillation process to create perfumery liquids, weak liquors, purified water, poisons, and later on other stronger alcoholic beverages.
The process
Distillation is a purification technique for a liquid or a mixture of liquids. The round bottom flask (or still pot) is attached to an unpacked condenser. The condenser is attached to a three way adapter that contains the thermometer, and a water jacketed condenser with cold water running through it. The bottom image shows a fractional distillation apparatus. The round bottom flask (or still pot) is attached to a condenser packed with copper sponge. The sponge gives a large surface area for the vapor to condense on, leading to a more efficient distillation.boiling points of liquids as a basis of separation. The core of a distillation process, is selective evaporation and condensation of particular components.The overall goal is to evaporate and condense only one component from a mixture, but to attain this goal, many must be allow, many cycles of evaporation and condensation to take place. This process gradually enriches the vapor phase in favor of the most volatile component. After a sufficient number of evaporation and condensation cycles have taken place, the final condensate contains a liquid that is en- riched in the more volatile component.
See also[edit | edit source]
- Ethanol production: production of ethanol by distilling
- Solar distillation
