distil

Distil is the British English spelling of the verb distill. The term denotes the process of separating components in a liquid mixture by heating to form vapor and then condensing the vapor back into liquid, thereby purifying the substance or concentrating volatile components. In American English, the spelling is distill.

Etymology and origins: Distil derives from Latin distillare, via Old French distiller, reflecting its long history in alchemy and early chemistry. The word has been in use since medieval times to describe technologies that extract, purify, or concentrate constituents of liquids.

Distillation in science and industry: Distillation encompasses several methods. Simple distillation separates liquids with widely different boiling points. Fractional distillation uses a fractionating column to achieve sharper separation of close-boiling constituents. Vacuum distillation lowers ambient pressure to distill at lower temperatures, protecting heat-sensitive materials. Steam distillation extracts volatile compounds from plant material by co-distilling with water. Distillation is widely used for purifying solvents, producing alcoholic beverages, and extracting essential oils, among other applications.

Apparatus and procedures: Historically, a still or alembic was used in distillation. Modern laboratory setups employ glassware such as a round-bottom flask, a condenser, and, for fractional distillation, a fractionating column. Industrial distillation may involve large-scale columns, reboilers, and condensers arranged to achieve continuous or batch processing.

Figurative use: Beyond its chemical meaning, distil is commonly used metaphorically to mean extracting the essential meaning, principle, or lesson from a larger body of information or experience.

See also: Distillation.