Modeling of an industrial wiped film poly(ethylene terephthalate) reactor

An improved two-phase model has been developed for a wiped film (third stag e) polyester reactor. The model accounts for all the important main and sid e reactions and incorporates the effect of vaporization of four low molecul ar weight volatile species. Industrial data under three different operating conditions are used to obtain best-fit (tuned) values of the model paramet ers. When these values are used unchanged in the model, the latter predicts industrial operation under a fourth set of operating condition. This indic ates that the 'tuned' model accounts for all the physico-chemical phenomena present in the reactor. A sensitivity study reveals the importance of some parameters and suggests that these should be determined experimentally usi ng more basic experimental studies rather than by tuning industrial data wh erein several additional physical phenomena are present.