How Do You Spell FRACTIONAL DISTILLATION?

1. Fractional distillation is a process of separation and purification employed in various industries, particularly in chemistry and petroleum refining, to separate different components of a mixture based on their boiling points. It involves the separation of a liquid mixture into its individual components or fractions by exploiting the differences in their volatility or boiling points.

   The process begins by heating the mixture to its boiling point. As the mixture vaporizes, the vapors are passed through a fractionating column, which consists of several trays or packing materials. The column is maintained at a decreasing temperature gradient from bottom to top. This temperature gradient allows for the separation of different components based on their boiling points.

   As the vapors rise through the column, their temperature decreases. Consequently, substances with higher boiling points condense first and collect on the trays or packing materials lower in the column, while substances with lower boiling points continue to rise until reaching the higher sections of the column.

   By collecting the condensed fractions at various levels of the column, each with a different composition, the desired components can be isolated and purified. This process is particularly useful in the petroleum industry to separate crude oil into its different fractions such as gasoline, diesel, kerosene, and lubricating oil.

   Fractional distillation is vital in obtaining pure substances from complex mixtures and has widespread applications in various industries where separation and purification are crucial for the production of different products.

2. The d. of a compound liquid at varying degrees of heat whereby the components of different boiling points are collected separately.

   A practical medical dictionary. By Stedman, Thomas Lathrop. Published 1920.

Common Misspellings for FRACTIONAL DISTILLATION

The word "fractional distillation" has its roots in the Latin language.

Etymology:

- "Fractional" comes from the Latin word "fractus", which means "broken" or "divided". This term refers to the process of separating a mixture into its constituent parts or fractions.

- "Distillation" is derived from the Latin word "distillare", which means "to drop or trickle down". The term "distillare" itself can be broken down into "dis" (meaning "apart" or "away") and "stillare" (meaning "to drip" or "to drop").

Therefore, "fractional distillation" refers to the process of vaporizing a liquid mixture and then condensing the vapor to separate it into different components based on their boiling points or volatilities.