Distillation process and apparatus for its realization

In a distillation process in which a liquid mixture of several components having different volatilities is introduced into the process through a feed zone and is divided by partial condensation into a vapor phase of high concentration of more readily volatile components as a recovered product and a liquid phase with low concentration of the more readily volatile components, the vapor phase being brought into intimate contact with a reflux produced by partial condensation in order to obtain an enrichment of the more readily volatile components in the vapor phase, the vapor formed by external heating and exchanging concentration for the liquid phase of the mixture in order to strip the mixture of the more readily volatile component to the greatest extent possible, the improvement being in a non-adiabatic distillation process having the steps of transferring the total heat of condensation for the reflux from the vapor phase to a heat sink by continuously extracting said reflux heat of condensation over the entire region of a rectifying section downstream of said feed zone with respect to vapor flow in order to maintain the heat balance at any point in said rectifying section, whereby the vapor phase is passed along the dewpoint curve of said vapor;

• and initiating a stripping step by continously introducing reboil heat over the entire region of a stripping section into said stripping section, wherein said stripping section is upstream of the feed zone with respect to vapor flow, in order to maintain the heat balance at any point in said stripping section, whereby the liquid phase is passed along the bubble-point curve of said liquid mixture;
• and recovering said stripped liquid phase and vapor phase.