The importance of obtaining consistent steady-state gains increases as the expected level of performance increases. A new consistency relationship is derived to ensure that the steady-state gains identified are physically correct. In addition to the consistency relationship, an identification procedure is also proposed to achieve the internal consistency. Unlike the typical identification-reconciliation procedure, the proposed approach meets the internal consisency via the identification procedure (no reconciliation is necessary). Two nonlinear distillation examples, a 2 x 2 system and a 3 x 3 system, are used to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The results show that physically correct description of the columns can be achieved using the proposed approach for a range of changes in the manipulated variables.