Even though distillation is widely used in the chemical industry, there are key drawbacks in terms of its low energy efficiency and significant operating costs . Especially the start-up process of distillation columns is very inefficient. It generally marks a nonproductive process as no value is added during this phase . Therefore, the goal of minimizing the production costs and generated waste by shortening the time needed for the start-up is of high importance and common to all production facilities . The start-up process of distillation columns has been discussed intensively in literature over the last forty years. One of the fundamental works in this field constitutes the work of Ruiz et al. . It includes a description of the start-up process and introduces a general start-up concept. This concept is based on the opening and closing of valves at specific points in time. The developed start-up scheme is generally accepted and serves as basis for many industrial and research start-up applications for different types of distillation columns ever since . Beyond this general description, there are already several studies on time-optimal startup strategies for conventional distillation columns like the ones of Kruse et al. , Fieg , Woinaroschy and Flender and also for reactive distillation columns like the ones of Reepmeyer and Forner .