Reactive distillation by design

During the last decade there has been a rapid upturn in interest in reactive distillation. The chemical process industry recognizes the favourable economics of carrying out reaction simultaneously with distillation for certain classes of reacting systems, and many new processes have been built based on this technology. Interest is also increasing by academics and software vendors. Systematic design methods for reactive distillation systems have only recently begun to emerge. We survey the available design techniques and point out opportunities for research