CONTROL OF SOLUTION COPOLYMERIZATION REACTORS
Abstract
The requirements of productivity, safety and quality impose the development of advanced control strategies for polymerization processes. Polymers produced by solution polymerization must have well-defined characteristics and physicochemical properties such as the polymer composition and molecular weight distribution. This work proposes a new observer-based control structure in order to control the composition and the molecular weight of the polymer. A high gain observer that allows estimating the concentration of radicals and the residual number of moles of monomers is developed. A nonlinear input-output linearizing geometric approach is then applied to control the composition and the polymer molecular weight by manipulating the inlet flow rate of monomers and chain transfer agent. The control strategy is validated by simulation during the solution copolymerization of methyl methacrylate and vinyl acetate.