Composition control of batch copolymerization reactors

✍ Scribed by Matthew Tirrell; Kevin Gromley

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1981
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 876 KB
• Volume: 36
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0009-2509
• DOI: 10.1016/0009-2509(81)85017-8

✦ Synopsis

Abstrac+-Composition control of free-radically initiated batch copolymerization reactor by temperature manipulation is investigated through a program of calculation and experiment. The work of Ray and Gall is extended to explicit calculation of temperature vs time policies which eliminate or minimize composition drift. Both continuous and discrete, oiecewise-constant oolicies have been computed. The former are disjoint policies which can bc found . simply by manipulating the monomer mass balances; the tatter are found through &Ii&ion of the discrete version of the maximum principle. Calculations are compared to experiments done on the system styrene-acrylonitrile. It is demonstrated that implementation of some of Ihe computed policies is feasible and quite beneficial. The time discrete policies with smalt numbers of stages (less than -six) perform much more poorly than the continuous policies indicating that the copolymerization reactor is much more sensitive to deviations from optimal&y than batch reactors operating with other reaction schemes. Thus, effective implementation of the lype of control studied here will necessitate use of controllers capable of closely tracking a continuous trajectory.