Abundance of the chemical elements of the volatile elements hydrogen, helium, neon, and nitrogen, as well as carbon which has been lost as volatile hydrocarbons. The remaining elemental composition is roughly typical of the "rocky" inner planets, which formed in the thermal zone where solar heat drove volatile compounds into space. The Earth retains oxygen as the second-largest component of its mass (and largest atomic-fraction), mainly from this element being retained in silicate minerals which have a very high melting point and low vapor pressure. The mass-abundance of the nine most abundant elements in the Earth's crust is approximately: oxygen 46%, silicon 28%, aluminum 8.2%,
Zeotropic mixture is plotted against the concentration of the vapor. The component with the highest boiling point has a max concentration at the bottom of the column, where the component with the lowest boiling point has a max concentration at the top of the column. The component with the intermediate boiling point has a max concentration in the middle of the distillation column. Because of how these mixtures separate, mixtures with greater than three substances require more than one distillation column to separate the components. Many configurations can be used to separate mixtures into the same products, though some schemes are more