A comparative study on the conceptual design of reactive distillation process configurations is presented, considering the reversible reaction A(1) double left right arrowA(2) in an ideal binary mixture as simple model system. The analysed flow schemes are a reactor-distillation column sequence with an external recycle loop, the same recycle system with a prereactor, a nonreactive distillation column on top of a reactive reboiler, a fully reactive distillation column, and a hybrid distillation column combining a reactive and a nonreactive section. For these configurations, the design aspects are discussed in terms of the most important operating parameters, kinetic parameters and design parameters. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.