With emphasis on close boiling, (near-)ideal VLE mixtures, this paper links the efficiency of distillation to the binary feed composition and thermal properties of the compounds. The proposed approach, treating the process as a heat engine, allows to directly quantify distillation performance (in terms of energy intensity & efficiency) based on the components boiling points and feed composition. In addition, this approach reviews and formulates simple, approximate and essentially non-iterative calculation procedures to quickly estimate the energy efficiency of distillation. These estimations may be applied to identify opportunities to save significant amounts of energy. The results show that the reboiler duty for low relative volatility is relatively independent of the heat of vaporization and feed composition, while being reciprocally proportional to the Carnot efficiency of the distillation column. The internal efficiency for distillation of mixtures with low relative volatility has a maximum of about 70% for a symmetrical feed (equimolar ratio) and decreases to zero for unsymmetrical feed compositions approaching infinite dilution. With increasing relative volatility, the maximum efficiency is preserved, but the locus shifts towards lower light component fractions. At very high relative volatility, the internal efficiency increases with decreasing concentration of light component, as typical for evaporators. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.