This paper studies the design of optimal temperature profiles for a class of exothermic, jacketed dispersive tubular reactors under steady-state conditions and subject to maximum temperature constraints. The studied class ranges from perfectly mixed continuous stirred tank reactors to plug flow reactors. The aim is to derive the Pareto optimal set of temperature profiles for conflicting conversion and energy costs, while extracting generic features from the obtained solutions. Hereto, a four step procedure which is based on a weighted sum of both costs and which combines indirect, analytical and direct, numerical optimal control techniques, is employed. The generic features are studied (i) along the Pareto set by varying the weights and (ii) along the reactor class by adapting the dispersion level. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.