COMPUTATION OF OPTIMAL TEMPERATURE POLICY FOR MOLECULAR-WEIGHT CONTROL IN A BATCH POLYMERIZATION REACTOR

This paper proposes a modified two-step method for estimating the reactor temperature in order to obtain a polymer which has a prescribed molecular weight distribution (MWD) in a free-radical polymerization batch reactor. First, profiles of instantaneous average chain length and polydispersity to give the desired MWD are estimated. Next, the time profile of reator temperature is obtained via efficient tracking of the profile of instantaneous average chain length only. In this way, the proposed algorithm can be adapted to a more realistic polymerization system. The possibility of achieving the time profile of reactor temperature is also examined.