In this video, Fran Scott explains fractional distillation - the separation of crude oil into fractions. Crude oil is a finite resource; petrol and other fuels are produced from it using fractional ...

Distillation columns are extensively deployed in the chemical process industries when there is a need for separation of components that have different boiling points. Typically, a mixture of ...

CORRECTION: This story was updated on Dec. 16, 2015, to correct the description of distillation and to clarify the separation difficulty posed by azeotropes. A new method for heating liquid mixtures ...