A comparative analysis of the feedback control responses to set point changes of three thermally coupled distillation schemes and two conventional distillation sequences for the separation of ternary mixtures is presented. Designs for the thermally coupled schemes were obtained and optimized for energy consumption to link their energy characteristics to their dynamic behavior. For the comparison of the dynamic behavior, responses to set point changes under closed loop operation with proportional-integral (PI) controllers were obtained. For each separation scheme, the parameters of the PI controllers of the three composition control loops were optimized using the integral of the absolute error criterion. The effects of feed composition and of the ease of separability index were considered. The dynamic tests showed that in many cases the thermally coupled distillation schemes outperformed the dynamic responses of the conventional distillation sequences. The results indicate that there exist cases in which the energy savings provided by the thermally coupled systems do not conflict with their dynamic properties. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.