Since the introduction of "Higee" more than three decades ago, only a few commercial distillation applications have been reported. In this paper, the reasons for this situation are analyzed based on a comprehensive review of the relevant literature. Several important guidelines on rotor design have been proposed in order to develop a new rotating bed that could be commercialized for distillation. A novel kind of rotating bed, the rotating zigzag bed (RZB), has been proposed, which dispenses with a liquid distributor and an inside dynamic seal and is capable of easily achieving intermediate feed and simple multi-rotor configurations. These advantages facilitate the application of the RZB for commercial continuous distillation processes. Three examples of different common processes are given to illustrate its industrial application. Because the distillation process is used widely in the chemical process industries (CPI), the RZB has very broad prospects of application. (C) 2011 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.v. All rights reserved.