In the last years, the industries have shown interest in the development of reactive Separation processes. Reactive distillation can be considered as reaction and distillation combined into one new unit operation and this integrated separation process is a good example of process intensification. This intensified process offers several important advantages that include the increment of the reaction yield and selectivity, the overcoming of thermodynamic restrictions and the considerable reduction in energy, water and solvent consumptions. Therefore, this process configuration has been applied in several chemical industries. However, due to the strong interactions of chemical reactions and heat and mass transfer, the design of this intensified separation process tends to be quite complex. The design of reactive distillation systems can be performed using single and multi-objective optimization approaches. This paper provides a comprehensive short review on current applications of deterministic and stochastic optimization techniques for the design of reactive distillation. Capabilities and limitations of optimization for reactive distillation design are discussed and topics for future research are provided. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.