The integration of reaction and separation in one single process unit is generally more preferable than their application individually, which allows less energy consumption and environmental impacts. This work presents a novel practicable configuration of heat-integrated process based on reactive distillation that aims to reduce furthermore the energy requirements for tert-amyl methyl ether (TAME) synthesis, leading to competitive operating costs. The optimal design flowsheet of heat-integrated with reactive distillation was obtained by minimizing the total annual cost (TAC) of this process. Simulation study was conducted to compare the heat-integrated scheme and conventional reactive distillation (CRD). The proposed technology was demonstrated to decrease the TAC which was 6.56% less than that of the CRD. The control strategy of this heat-integrated design was also developed. Only tray temperature control loop was needed to reject feed disturbances to maintain the quality of the products. Overall results demonstrate that the heat-integrated reactive distillation is a promising approach for TAME synthesis. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.