Distillation
Distillation is the process of heating a liquid until it boils, capturing and cooling the resultant hot vapours, and collecting the condensed vapours. Mankind has applied the principles of distillation for thousands of years. Distillation was probably first used by ancient Arab chemists to isolate perfumes.
In the modern organic chemistry laboratory, distillation is a powerful tool, both for the identification and the purification of organic compounds. The boiling point of a compound—determined by distillation—is well-defined and thus is one of the physical properties of a
compound by which it is identified. Distillation is used to
purify a compound by separating it from a non-volatile or less-volatile material. When different compounds in a mixture have different boiling points, they separate into individual components when the mixture is carefully distilled.
One example of distillation is distilled water. Distilled water is water that has many of its impurities removed through distillation. Distillation involves boiling the water and then condensing the steam into a clean container.
