The Working Principle of the Distillation Tower in General

                                         

Picture of Destilation tower

The distillation column is a process equipment that is widely used in process industries including oil refineries. The distillation column used to separate a material containing two or more components of the material into multiple components based on differences in volatility (ease yawn) of each component of the material.

The distillation column is a series of process equipment consists of a preheater, column, condenser, accumulator, reboiler and supporting equipment, with the configuration as shown below.
Kolomatau often called the tower has two uses; the first to split the feed into two portions, namely vapor that rises to the top of the column and the portion of the liquid down to the bottom (bottom) column; The second is to keep the two-phase mixture of vapor and liquid (flowing counter-current) to be balanced, so that the separation becomes more perfect.

Overhead vapor leaving the top of the column and into the condenser, the vapor becomes liquid will be collected in the accumulator. Most liquid from the accumulator is returned to the column as reflux, while others as overhead product or distillate.

Bottom liquid exits the bottom of the column and heated to reboiler. Most liquid into a vapor and returned to the column, and the other part will be issued as a bottom product or residue.

This is a column configurations are relatively simple, the more complex applications, partially vapor or liquid drawn from some point on the side of the column (sidestream) as an intermediate product and / or as reflux.

In general, the material to be separated (feed) is inserted into the column through the side of the column. Lighter components will evaporate into vapor and rises to the top (overhead) column, while the heavier components in the form of liquid will fall to the bottom (bottom) of the column. So that separation can take place effectively, then both vapor and liquid phase must exist throughout the column. To maintain the achievement of these conditions, the operating conditions of the column should be maintained by using a control system.

The control system consists of a distillation column :

Pressure control.
Reflux control.
Reboiler control.
Pump arround control.
Feed control.