Dimethyl ether is a promising alternative energy source to liquefi ed petroleum gas and diesel fuel due to its cleaner combustion

properties. However, dimethyl ether production from methanol typically suff ers from intense energy consumption, high

CO 2 emissions, and large costs. Advanced distillation technologies, particularly reactive distillation (RD) and dividing-wall

column (DWC), are potentially capable of addressing such issues. The present study evaluates the techno-economic performance

of those advanced distillation technologies by accounting for a complete set of reaction and separation functions

and an identical catalyst, i.e., Amberlyst-35, for each process confi guration. The use of a common catalyst ensures that the

identifi ed performance diff erences are attributable to the technology confi gurations themselves rather than the variations in

catalyst type. The fi nding interestingly suggests that the DWC scheme outperforms both conventional reactor-distillation

and RD schemes. The specifi c energy consumptions for the conventional, RD and DWC schemes are 1.74, 4.10 and 1.41 GJ/

ton, respectively, while the CO 2 emissions for those schemes are 0.09, 0.22 and 0.08 tons CO 2 /ton, respectively. The DWC

scheme off ers the lowest total annual cost, i.e., $1,601,733/year, followed by the conventional and RD schemes, which are

$1,844,407/year and $2,585,633/year, respectively.