Fatty esters provide new building-blocks for sustainable chemical and biochemical processes or can be used as biofuels. For a greener and more economic production of these esters waste cooking oils are a promising feedstock, but a pre-treatment step is required. In this step the high content of free fatty acids is reduced by an acid catalysed esterification. To further enhance the overall process efficiency, reactive distillation is favourable for the pretreatment. In order to enable a comprehensive analysis of an industrial production process, a step-by-step procedure considering lab-scale experiments and determination of important model parameters is provided. In this study the reaction kinetics of the esterification of oleic acid with ethanol forming the ester ethyl oleate is determined. Prior, a suitable catalyst matching the operating window of a reactive distillation process is identified in an experimental screening. (C) 2015 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.