ABSTRACT
The combination of chemical reaction with distillation of reactants in a single piece of process equipment is called reactive distillation. Frequently reactive distillation is also referred to as catalytic distillation, implying that most of the chemical reactions carried out by this unit operation are catalyzed, either homogeneously or heterogeneously. Reactive distillation offers a wide variety of possibilities for the efficient integration of chemical processes and has therefore been a focus of research in the chemical process industry and academia [1-3].
