Vacuum Distillation
The vacuum distillation has many-advantages over conventional distillation at atmospherically plants like lower energy requirement, very good quality alcohol and less scaling of the distillation trays due to sludge. The vacuum distillation produces ethanol of international quality standards and there is a lot of demand of ethanol from the vacuum distillation process.
“The Extra Neutral Alcohol produced from this latest technology will meet most of the international quality standards for ethanol like US Pharmacopoeia, British Pharmacopoeia and Japanese standards.”
The vacuum distillation approximately requires 50 % less steam as compared with the conventional old distillation technologies. The vacuum distillation consists of distillation columns with high efficiency column trays, condensers, re boilers, vacuum pumps and reflux pumps. A closed loop cooling tower system with an induced draft-cooling tower with circulation pumps is also provided to ensure higher cooling efficiency and to minimize water wastage.
In this vacuum distillation ethanol is separated and concentrated using principal of fractional distillation. This is based on difference in boiling points of volatile compounds in mixture.