This paper deals with the advanced adaptive control of a batch reactive distillation (RD) column for the production of ethyl acetate. The nonlinear adaptive control law consists of the generic model controller (GMC) and an adaptive state estimator (ASE). In the first part of the present work, the design approach of the ASE scheme in two different forms, namely ASE1 and ASE2, has been addressed for a batch reactive rectifier. The predictor model of both the ASE estimators includes only a component mole balance equation around the condenser-reflux drum system and an extra state equation having no dynamics, and therefore, there is a large process/predictor mismatch. In presence of this structural discrepancy, the adaptive estimation schemes compute the imprecisely known parameters quite accurately based on the measured distillate composition under initialization error, disturbance and uncertainty. In the subsequent part, the adaptive GMC-ASE1 control structure has been formulated for the sample reactive column. This nonlinear control strategy shows comparatively better closed-loop performance than the gain-scheduled proportional integral (GSPI) controller due to the exponential error convergence capability of the estimation scheme and the high-quality control of the GMC law. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.