That's more or less the correct way to run anything energy intensive, scavenge as much of the waste heat as you reasonably can. Theoretically, continuous disti

That's more or less the correct way to run anything energy intensive, scavenge as much of the waste heat as you reasonably can. Theoretically, continuous distillation can be extremely efficient, as, you're removing as much heat as you're putting into the system. In reality, you get into diminishing returns fairly quickly, because insulation, pumps, heat exchangers, etc, are all far from free, especially at scale.