The paper presents an industrial view on the current developments in the field of reactive separations, particularly reactive distillation, reactive adsorption and membrane reactors, and their place in the intensification of chemical manufacturing and processing. Several cases of successfully commercialized reactive separation technologies are presented. Barriers hindering a wider introduction of reactive separations in the industry are discussed, together with the most likely scenarios of further developments in the field. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.