The Petlyuk distillation configuration has received considerable attention because of its efficiency to reduce the energy required for the separation of ternary mixtures. The structure of the Petlyuk system offers some control challenges arising from the transfer of vapor streams back and forth between the columns. This means that neither of the columns can have a uniform lower nor higher pressure. Recently, some alternate Petlyuk-like schemes that might provide better operational properties than the Petlyuk column have been proposed. In this work, we analyze the control properties of six alternative thermally coupled distillation schemes to the Petlyuk system. The theoretical control properties are analyzed with the application of the singular value decomposition technique. Rigorous closed loop simulations are used to supplement the theoretical analysis. The results indicate that a reduction in the number of interconnections of the Petlyuk configuration does not necessarily provide an improvement of its controllability properties. © 2005 Published by Elsevier Ltd.