There are essentially two parts to the theoretical background regarding the analysis of the distillation column in our laboratory. The first area of interest is predicting values of the bottoms and distillate ethanol mole fractions based on the number of theoretical stages measured at total reflux and the known feed, bottoms, reflux, and distillate flow rates for the various experimental runs. The second area of interest is determining the theoretical minimum number of stages and minimum reflux ratio based on the measured values of the bottoms and distillate ethanol mole fractions, not at total reflux.