Abstract The evaluation of the technical and economic separation of the monoterpenes α ‐pinene and d ‐limonene from essential oils, carried out by computational simulation of the vacuum fractional distillation in continuous and batch mode from samples of turpentine and citrus oils, was developed using Aspen Plus® software combined with estimations of operational expenses (OPEX) and capital expenses (CAPEX) based on the Guthrie method. The production of d ‐limonene and α ‐pinene with high purity from the essential oils is a technically feasible process. From the economic point of view and based on the average annual import costs of turpentine and orange oils in Colombia, it was found that the selling prices of α ‐pinene and d ‐limonene obtained from the distillation module cost analysis depend on the daily production and can be minimized if essential oils are preliminary extracted from local industrial wastes.