A COMBINED HARDWARE SOFTWARE SENSING APPROACH FOR ONLINE CONTROL OF EMULSION POLYMERIZATION PROCESSES/

In the present work, a new strategy for the on-line determination of i nformation concerning a free radical polymerisation (overall and indiv idual monomer conversions, and the product of the number of radicals p er particle multiplied by the number of particles) is presented. It is based on the construction of a non-linear observer that uses informat ion obtained via a new adaptive inferential calorimetric measurement s cheme. The results, presented for the case of the emulsion copolymeris ation of methyl methacrylate (MMA) and vinyl acetate (VAc), show that with only a rough model of the physical process, it is possible to obt ain reliable estimates of the evolution of the polymerisation reaction . (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.