36-100-45, 36-100-60 and 36-100-90 Spinning band distillation system

50ml to 1 liter range.

The need for information about the composition of crude oil has become an increasingly important topic among refiners, oil producers and researchers. These professionals want an easy, automatic distillation system that can produce distilled fractions quickly. Often the available volume to be distilled is very small, between 50ml and 1000 ml.

Traditional crude oil distillation systems have problems with small samples. A large amount of material can be held up in the distillation column packing. This skews the results and makes the distillation process difficult or impossible.

Spinning band distillation has two very unique characteristics, low hold-up and low pressure drop. Low hold-up means that very little sample is left in the column at the end of the distillation. For spinning band distillation columns the hold-up is usually much less than 1 ml. This is very important when dealing with very small samples. Low pressure drop means that there is very little back pressure created by the spinning band. This permits the spinning band distillation column to handle everything from very light materials to viscous, high boiling materials.

The low pressure drop and low hold-up of the spinning band distillation column makes it ideal for distillation of crude oil from the initial boiling point to as high as 500°C (final boiling point depends on crude oil type and sample handling). Traditionally, two distillation columns are needed, one from initial boiling point up to 400 °C and a second distillation column is needed from 400 to 500°C. A major advantage of spinning band distillation is that this can all be done with one distillation column. This greatly simplifies the whole distillation process by eliminating the change over from one distillation system to another. This is particularly important with very small samples since material is lost in the changeover process.

Additionally, the spinning band provides for a distillation curve with no discontinuities. Using the traditional method, a discontinuity occurs in the distillation curve when changing over from a packed column to a vacuum pot still. This does not occur with the spinning band since one distillation column is used from beginning to end.

Lastly, the spinning band has a great separating efficiency. It has a maximum of 80 theoretical plates at atmospheric pressure. As a result, the fractions are very sharp, having much less cross contamination than with a traditional distillation system.

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