How does short path distillation work?

Short path distillation (molecular distillation) is a thermal separation processes for heat sensitive products. Short residence time and low evaporation temperature will cause minimal thermal stress to the distilled product and consequently a very gentle distillation.

Vacuum is used in shorth path distillation to substantially decrease the boiling temperature by reducing the operating pressure. Short path distillation is a continuous separation process with a very short residence time (tens of seconds) compared to hours on other conventional separation processes such as continuous (circulation, film or distillation) or non-continuous (batch distillation) distillation processes.

Unlike other distillation techniques, short path distillation is invariably applied for the separation of the high molecular weight organic components, where the other distillation methods lead to breakdown of heat sensitive molecules at high temperatures, i.e. above 200°C respectively.