Mid-course control of particle size distribution in emulsion polymerization using a hybrid model

Abstract

This work proposes a practical approach to control the particle size distribution in seeded semi-batch emulsion polymerization. In this approach, initially an offline optimization is performed and the resulting monomer feed trajectory is implemented at the plant up to the predefined mid-course point of the batch. Frequent measurements are used to estimate the lumped states of the system using a state estimator. The estimated states and the measured PSD at the mid-course of the process are used as the initial condition for a re-optimization which is performed to obtain the trajectory of the monomer feed from the mid-course up to the end of the batch. In this re-optimization, a hybrid model which comprises the FokkerPlanck equation model of emulsion polymerization and a databased component that corrects the predictions of the FokkerPlanck model during the re-optimization is used.

Modeling Particle Size Distribution in Heterogeneous Polymerization Systems Using Multimodal Lognormal Function

“…Furthermore, the understanding of the dynamics of PSD is very important for process monitoring and final quality control of heterogeneous polymerization processes (Hosseini et al, 2013). Therefore, PSD modeling has received great attention with the proposal of models such as Population Balance Equations (PBE) (Machado et al, 2000;Araújo et al, 2001;Kiparissides et al, 2002;Immanuel et al, 2002;Coen et al, 2004).…”