What is Molecular Distillation Process?
Molecular distillation is an efficient liquid-liquid separation method, which is to separate substances through the difference among molecular motion mean free path of different substances. Therefore, the whole working process of molecular distillation is about molecular motion. The working process of molecular distillation is as follows:
- The molecules diffuse from the liquid body to the evaporation surface: in this step, users should thin the thickness of the liquid layer and enhance the flow of the liquid layer as we can, in order to control the speed of distilling molecules.
- Free evaporation of molecules on the surface of the liquid layer: in this step, the heating temperature is set according to the heated material’s boiling temperature. In the meanwhile, the evaporating speed will increase with the increase of temperature, and vise versa. Therefore, users should choose an economical and proper temperature.
- The molecules fly from the evaporation surface to the condensation surface: in this step, the vapor molecules may collide with each other or with air molecules remaining between the two sides. And the number of residual gas molecules is the main factor affecting the direction of flight and the evaporation rate.
- The molecules condense on the condensation surface: this step is the final step, pointed molecules are extracted out. The molecules are gas-phase, so it is necessary to condense the gas-phase molecules into liquid-phase molecules. In this step, it is essential to choose an economical and proper condenser.
What are the Molecular Distillation Apparatus?
As we all know, molecular distillation is an effective but complicated liquid-liquid separation method. There are several parts working together to separate substances from mixture, so let’s see what the parts are. The molecular distillation equipment mainly consists of an evaporation system, a material input and output system, a heating system, a condensing system, a vacuum system, a control system and so on.
- Evaporation system: which is to get sample materials evaporated, in order to separate substances from mixtures through their different boiling points.
- Material input and output system: which is to put materials into the molecular distillation equipment and let end products and other residual materials out of the molecular distillation after the reactions.
- Heating system: which is to heat the sample materials and get them evaporated, in order to separate the substances. The temperature that heating system provides is much lower than the substances’ boiling points because of the high pressure.
- Condensing system: which is to condense the gas-phase end products into liquid-phase, in order to make end products easily to be collected.
- Vacuum system: which is to offer a vacuum environment to the whole molecular distillation equipment.
- Control system: which is to control the whole molecular distillation equipment correctly, in order to make the equipment work well and fluently.
