Optimal synthesis of rotating packed bed reactor Zhi Qian 1 , Ignacio E. Grossmann* 2 1 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, People's Republic of China. 2 Department of Chemical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, United States ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 412 268 2230; fax: +1 412 268 7139. E-mail address: grossmann@cmu.edu (I.E. Grossmann). ABSTRACT Rotating packed bed (RPB), a novel apparatus involving process intensification (PI), has been successfully used in the chemical industry in recent decades. In this paper, we establish a connection between process integration and process intensification for which we propose a superstructure involving a RPB and a packed bed (PB) in order to determine the optimal integrated design. We describe models to predict flow performance and design of RPB and PB. These are used as a basis to set up the optimization models for RPB and PB which are incorporated in a superstructure that considers configurations in series, in parallel and in between. The optimization of the superstructure is formulated as a nonlinear programming problem. The application of the proposed synthesis model is demonstrated with a case study with H2S removal from plant tail gas.