Increasingly stringent regulations on the maximum permissible sulfur levels in transportation fuels has inspired considerable interest in reactive distillation (RD) based fuel hydrodesulfurization (HDS) in the refining industry. In this work, the steady-state economic design and plantwide control of an RD naphtha HDS process is studied. The process consists of an RD column followed by an absorber-stripper unit. Engineering heuristics are employed to develop a near-optimum economic process design. The important trade-offs in the design of the process are explained. A simple decentralized plantwide control system employing single-point temperature inferential control in the RD column with the fresh naphtha feed as the throughput manipulator is shown to provide effective process regulation for large changes in throughput, fresh naphtha thiophene composition, and feed hydrogen composition.