This article continues a series of annual bibliographic updates of the published literature (since 1980) on distillation and other equilibrium-staged separation processes. This article provides a useful and quick reference source to the 2002 journal literature (from the 50 most important chemical engineering journals) for researchers in this area. [1-12] The following topics are included:Distillation theory and design methodsDistillation control and applicationsColumn design dataAbsorption reactions and absorber designCooling towersLiquid-Liquid extractionSupercritical extractionA complete bibliographic listing of the chemical engineering journal literature from 1959 to 2002 (with subsequent 6-monthly updates) is available on an Internet (or CD-ROM) database.