Alcohol Distillation and Its Impact on Culture

Alcohol distillation has had an enormous effect on culture. From ancient Greece’s worship of Dionysus through medieval Europe’s practices of distilling wine, alcohol was an integral component of various rituals and ceremonies.

Alcohol distillation uses energy derived from burning to transform liquid mixtures into pure vapor that can then be condensed back down into liquid form, producing an ethanol product. Lower temperature distillations results in greater alcohol concentration while simultaneously decreasing water vaporizability and increasing energy requirements for distillation.

Certain systems employing vacuum distillation employ a lower pressure environment in order to achieve 100 percent distillation. With low enough pressure, the azeotrope between water and alcohol dissolves away, but energy consumption remains very high owing to small differences between liquid’s boiling point and its vapor temperature, necessitating much greater effort from vapor than from liquid in order to generate equal energy output.

Ethanol, which distillers seek to collect as potable alcohol, has a boiling point of 78.2 degrees Celsius; other undesirable and sometimes hazardous compounds have volatile boiling points which evaporate more rapidly at lower temperatures and must therefore be separated out by diversion from ethanol into its proper flow through the condenser. Heads (foreshots) must first be condensed before moving forward with distilling process – otherwise these would clog the flow.