Stripping and distillation are both methods of separation of components that have differences in their

relative volatility, or tendency to become a vapor as temperature rises. From a simple semantic point
of view, stripping is a form of specialized distillation.
Distillation is a term that encompasses a variety of separation techniques where a system of two or
more components are heated within a separation device, such as a flash drum or a distillation column.
The vapor generated is condensed back into a liquid that is enriched with a higher composition of the
lighter component and a lower composition of the less volatile, or heavier component. A single stage
system would be a simple flash drum where a liquid system of two or more components is heated and
the vapor flashes once and is condensed. A more complex system is a distillation column, where there
are multiple, consecutive flashes (multiple stages of equilibrium) that further purifies lighter
components from heavier components, thereby making each product stream richer in the desired
component ratios.
To describe what stripping is, you are typically referring to an attempt to remove light components from
a 'heavy' stream. Essentially, a stripper is a distillation column that 'strips' light material out of it by
applying heat, and sometimes returning the cooled distillate (tops product) into the column to further
purify the bottoms product, removing more incremental light material from the bottoms.
A typical stripper is a column where the feed tray enters at the top of the column, with few to zero
stages (trays) above the feed tray. The heat source enters the column at the bottom, and the feed
trickles down to the bottom trays and is essentially 'stripped' of light material by the vaporized reflux
traveling up the column. The light material vaporizes and leaves in the overhead product, and the
heavy material is purified all the way down to the heavier product stream.
A column that both strips and rectifies will have a feed tray in the middle of the column. The stripping
section are all trays below the feed tray, and the rectifying trays are above the feed tray. The rectifying
section is designed to allow the cool reflux to 'wash out' any entrained heavy material that flashes up
into the trays above the feed tray.
Finally, a stripping method found in refineries employs injecting steam into hydrocarbons in much the
same way heat is applied to the bottom of stripping tower. A stripping tower will take feed from a larger
distillation column, and have its own trays with stripping steam entering at the bottom of the minicolumn. The steam lowers the partial pressure of the light components; the heat from the heavier
material heats up the light ends and flash them out of the mixture. The steam does not vaporize the
light ends; it merely lowers the overall boiling point and allows the light material to flash away and
travel back into the main column with the steam to be recovered in product streams higher up in the
main column. The 'stripped' material leaves the small stripper as an independent product.