The design and control of thermally coupled distillation sequences have been studied since many years, but the real implementation occurred until middle of the 1980s using a single shell divided by a wall named dividing wall distillation column. In this work, experimental results for the production of ethyl acetate in a reactive dividing wall distillation column are presented for first time. The experimental results are in agreement with those obtained using steady state simulations with AspenONE Aspen plus. These experimental results are important since it is possible to validate most of the previous results generated using simulations. (C) 2011 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.