Home▸Chemistry & Materials▸Fractional Distillation: VLE and the McCabe-Thiele Method

🧪 Fractional Distillation: VLE and the McCabe-Thiele Method

Interactive 3D distillation column with stacked trays where users adjust reflux ratio and feed composition to watch vapor-liquid equilibrium stages separate a mixture, plotted alongside a McCabe-Thiele diagram.

Chemistry & Materials3DModerate60 FPS💧 Water

An interactive 3D distillation column with vapor-liquid equilibrium trays, stepped live using the McCabe-Thiele graphical method as you adjust reflux ratio, relative volatility, feed composition and target purities.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

Each theoretical tray moves the vapor composition toward equilibrium with the liquid, then the next tray's liquid is set by the rectifying or stripping operating line — the same horizontal/vertical stepping shown live on the McCabe-Thiele diagram.

🎮 How to Use

Adjust reflux ratio, relative volatility, feed composition and the target distillate/bottoms purities. Watch the tray count, feed-tray position and minimum reflux update, with tray liquid colour shifting from orange (light component) to blue (heavy component) up the column.

💡 Did You Know?

Running a column at the minimum reflux ratio would theoretically require infinite trays — real columns operate at 1.1–1.5× R_min to balance the capital cost of trays against the energy cost of reboiling and condensing.

⚙ Under the hood

fractional-distillationvapor-liquid-equilibriummccabe-thieledistillationchemistryseparation-science

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install