Distillation

Distillation is a separation technique that uses Boiling and Condensation to purify liquids or extract dissolved substances. By heating a mixture to create vapor and then cooling that vapor back into liquid form, distillation exploits differences in boiling point between components—a principle as old as alchemy and as modern as industrial chemistry.

The process has countless applications. In the Kitchen, home cooks use distillation to make infused spirits or essential oils from Aromatic herbs. Whiskey, rum, and other spirits are traditionally distilled to concentrate flavor. In laboratories, distillation purifies water and solvents. Petroleum refineries use massive distillation towers to separate crude oil into gasoline, diesel, and other products.

The simplest setups require just heat, a flask, a condenser (often cooled with water), and collection vessels. More complex industrial distillation uses fractionating columns to separate multiple components simultaneously—a feat of both engineering and thermodynamic modeling.

Distillation's elegance lies in its universality: the same fundamental principle works whether you're extracting Scents from flowers or purifying drinking water in resource-limited settings.

Related

Boiling, Condensation, Solvent, Fermentation, Alchemy, Chemistry