Reactive distillation is an emerging technology that has great potential as a process alternative for carrying out liquid phase chemical reactions. Systematic design methods for reactive distillation systems have only recently begun to appear, and so far these have been restricted to systems at chemical equilibrium It is not always economical, however, to operate reactive distillation columns close to reaction equilibrium conditions. In this paper we present a design procedure for kinetically controlled reactive distillation columns, and demonstrate the concepts for reactions of the type 2C double left right arrow A + B. We show that the amount of liquid holdup per stage has a significant effect on the design, and that there is a sharp minimum in the total column holdup, at fixed product compositions, as the liquid holdup on each stage is varied.