Distillation Tower

Short-path distillation offers advantages such as low distillation temperatures, high vacuum levels, and short heating times, making it suitable for purifying high-boiling-point, heat-sensitive, and easily oxidized substances. However, the short-path distillation column is fundamentally a type of distillation equipment with limited separation capabilities. Even for molecular distillation, it's challenging to achieve a thorough separation for liquids with similar volatility and molecular weights, even with multi-stage short-path distillation (or molecular distillation). Therefore, a fractionating column with a higher number of theoretical plates is required for the separation of these systems.

To ensure the distillation tower's effective operation in separating high-boiling-point, heat-sensitive liquids, a distillation system with no material retention within the tower and its auxiliary equipment (reboiler) is suitable for precise separation of high-boiling-point and heat-sensitive substances, such as in the petrochemical, fragrance, and other industries. This system is utilized for vacuum distillation and for precise separation of difficult-to-separate systems requiring large theoretical plates, such as isomer separation. In this distillation system, a packed tower (equipped with metal corrugated plates, metal wire mesh, and other structured packing) is used to minimize the residence time of heat-sensitive materials within the tower and reduce pressure drop. To prevent material retention within the tower, the tower internals (such as feed distributors, collectors, and support grids) are specially designed. Additionally, no-material-retention falling film evaporators and rotating film evaporators are employed as reboilers.

Occasionally, the products at the bottom of a fractionating tower require further distillation to achieve desirable product color and purity. In such cases, we recommend customers opt for short-path distillation or thin-film evaporation for distilling the tower bottom products. In summary, we will conduct distillation/refining experiments and design solutions based on the properties of the materials to be separated and the customer's requirements.