In this contribution, a novel intensified heat integrated ternary distillation column (int-HITDiC) is introduced. The objective is to show the superiority of the int-HITDiC over its general form, namely the HITDiC and the conventional standalone column on the basis of two criteria: energy consumption and economics. The concept of pinch technology has been applied to identify the feasibility region for internal thermal coupling between two diabatic sections, namely the rectifying section and stripping section. In this study, the influence of system parameters on the behavior of HITDiC is examined. The optimum compression ratio is arrived at by taking into account the energetic and economic aspects. Performing a detailed analysis, it is observed that the general HITDiC scheme shows lower energy consumption and better economic figure compared to its conventional counterpart. Aiming to improve the overall efficiency further, the int-HITDiC scheme has been explored. The proposed intensified strategy gets the advantage of both HIDiC and direct vapor recompression column (VRC). (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.