To begin the design process hand calculations were conducted to find the operating limits of the column, minimum number of plates and minimum reflux. Once this information had been obtained it was used to carry out a preliminary heat and mass balance for the column at a sensible operating point. The initial exploratory calculations are critical to the design of the column as they give bounds in which the final column design must lie and can be used as a reality check during subsequent stages of the design process. Finally all of this information can be used create a computational model of the distillation using the flowsheeting programme Aspen and as a source of sensible values to specify within the model.