Reactive absorption is a separation process widely used in the environmental protection area. In this process, undesirable gaseous components are captured by chemical reaction in a solvent while the loaded solvent is regenerated in a desorption unit. Both process steps, absorption and desorption, take place simultaneously and strongly interact resulting in a very complex process behavior. To ensure stable and safe process operation, even in the presence of instabilities or malfunctions, understanding of the dynamic process behavior is essential. In this work, a pilot plant experimental study was carried out in which three different stepwise changes of the solvent flow rate were made. The results of this study were used as a validation basis for the recently developed novel dynamic model of reactive absorption/desorption processes in a closed-loop configuration including the plant periphery. The deviations between experimental and simulated outlet gas concentrations were found to be below 10% for all experiments. The validated model was used to investigate the influence of the periphery on the process performance.