COMPUTER-AIDED PARAMETER-ESTIMATION AND ONLINE MONITORING OF EMULSIONAND SOLUTION POLYMERIZATION REACTORS

The production of polymers is a complex process that produces material of which the quality is highly sensitive to operating conditions. Muc h work has been done in the past on the development of reactor models - models which are often highly complex, and can require any number of parameters and pseudo-constants. Currently, work also tends to focus on the development of sensors such as calorimetry and on-line density measurements in order to follow the evolution of conversion and the ma cromolecular properties of the polymer being produced. The project dis cussed here represents an effort to adapt these techniques by using tw o process computers and specially adapted non-linear algorithms (compu ter 1) for overcoming uncertainties in the data used by on-line comput er models (computer 2) to monitor, control and modify polymer properti es, e.g. glass transition temperature and molecular weights. The emuls ion and solution co-polymerisation of styrene and butyl acrylate is tr eated as an example.