Abstract:  In view of its great prospects for application and the peculiarity as well as complexity in its application‚the reactive distillation process was mathematically simulated and a general mathematical model was constructed‚with the synthesis of ethyl tert -butyl ether （ETBE） as an example．The Partial Newtonʾs method was then adopted to seek solu-tion for the proposed model．It is found through experiments that the experiment results basically accord with the simu-lation results‚thus proving the rationality and usability of the proposed model．The main technical conditions of the ETBE synthesis by means of the reactive distillation were finally optimized by using the proposed model．It is thus concluded that there exist some optimal values of the conditions；the optimal number of the total plates is16；the opti -mal mole fraction of the ethanol feed is0．5；and the optimal flowrate of the feed is0．24×10－3 mol／s．It is also con-cluded that the azeotropy of the reaction system exerts a negative impact on the reactive distillation process．The pre-sent study may offer some guidelines for the optimization of ETBE synthesis by means of the reactive distillation pro-cess．

Key words: reactive distillation, ethyl tert -butyl ether, mathematical simulation, optimization