By: Matti Manninen, Aarne Sundberg, Heidi Piili, Antti Salminen
Lappeenranta University of Technology, Laser Processing Research Group, Finland
Aalto University, Department of Biotechnology and Chemical Technology, Finland
Machine Technology Centre Turku Ltd, Finland
Distillation is the predominantly used separation method in chemical engineering. The device presented in this paper is called a microdistillation column, because the distilled volumes are measured in milliliters and dimensions in millimeters or less. There are two main reasons for a small distillation unit; firstly, it could theoretically be used in production, maybe in parallel with many such units. It could be used for example for hazardous or expensive materials, or in any case for applications which do not require large volumes to be distilled. More importantly, however, it could be used to study the distillation process in very small scale for the industrial scale device. Process development could then move from laboratory scale straight to industrial scale without need for expensive pilot plants.