Reaction distillation was firstly used for the process of acrylic acid synthesis through transesterification of methyl acrylate with acetic acid using a strongly acidic cationic exchange resin catalyst (NKC-9). Pseudo-Homogeneous (P-H) and Langmuir-Hinshelwood (L-H) heterogeneous kinetic models were presented and fitted with the experiment data obtained from batch reaction. The key factors of heterogeneous kinetic model were the four components adsorption equilibrium constants on the catalyst surface and they were determined by adsorption experiments. The activity coefficients were calculated using the NRTL method. The catalyst stability was evaluated in a fixed-bed reactor. Catalyst activity had no obviously decrease after 1000 hours running. A reactive distillation column for acrylic acid synthesis was proposed and designed with process simulation.