High purity distillation is a well-established area of research. In an industrial setting most columns are operated at high recovery rate due to economic factors. However, most research work in this area overlooks high recovery as well as the fact many operations have multi-component feeds. In high-purity (<. 10. ppm) multi-component methanol distillation the columns are typically operated at a recovery of 97.5%. Despite this relatively high value, even a 1% increase in recovery carries a significant financial incentive. In this work a validated model of a methanol distillation column was built in a commercial process simulator and used to study the dynamic behaviour of a real column operating high recovery levels. Based on the analysis the a novel control scheme has been developed and tested for 99.5% recovery: The control scheme extracts flow and composition information from feed, product and side draw streams to dynamically calculate the mass and energy requirements. The information is then used to set reboiler duty, and to manipulate the set points of the decentralized product ethanol composition controller and side draw flow controller. These actions manage the energy requirement, methanol and ethanol mass balances respectively.