As the pharmaceutical industry adopts continuous processes, batch distillation for solvent exchange will need to be replaced with a continuous distillation process. Cyclic distillation is adapted to solvent exchange, and a simplified calculation method that does not assume constant molar overflow is developed for binary systems. A three-stage cyclic distillation for exchange of methanol with water designed for a bottoms product that is 90% water produces a 99.3% methanol distillate, uses 25.4% less solvent than constant volume batch distillation, and is roughly equivalent to a five-stage continuous distillation. When water is the feed solvent and is exchanged with methanol, a three-stage cyclic distillation uses 54.4% and 40.0% less solvent than constant volume batch distillation and a three-stage continuous distillation, respectively.