Patent ID: 8241466

Claim:
A distillation apparatus for distilling a liquid to be processed, comprising: a distillation still for heating to vaporize the liquid to be processed; and a heat exchanger directly cooling a vapor of the liquid to be processed extracted from the distillation still, via a wall separating the vapor and a coolant gas acting as a cooling source, in order to condense the vapor into a liquid state; a buffer tank for storing a processed liquid resulting from distillation of the liquid to be processed; and a liquid circulation passage having inlet and outlet ends connected to the buffer tank, with a pump and an ejector both located between the two ends, the pump causing the processed liquid to circulate, and the ejector utilizing a flow of the processed liquid produced by the pump to suction a distillate resulting from devolatilization by the heat exchanger, wherein the heat exchanger is located within the buffer tank and further includes a wall separating the coolant gas and the processed liquid stored in the buffer tank.