Conference proceeding
Product Quality Improvement in a High-Temperature Free-Radical Polymerization Reactor
2003 American Control Conference; Denver, CO; USA; 4-6 June 2003, v 5, pp 3980-3985
04 Jun 2003
Abstract
In response to the strict environmental regulations on volatile organic solvents in paints and coatings, high-temperature solution polymerization has increasingly been used to manufacture low-molecular-weight; acrylic polymer resins for automotive coatings. Freeradical polymerization of acrylate and methacrylate monomers at high-temperatures (140-200DGC,) involves a number of side reactions that have a marked effect on the quality of the polymer product. These reactions are not significant at low temperatures. We have studied kinetics of liquid-phase, high-temperature, free-radical, n-butyl acrylate (nBA), polymerization reactions, leading to the development of a mathematical model for the polymerization. The model is capable of predicting the polymer molecular weight distribution and several functionality indices very accurately. For a semi-batch nBA polymerization reactor, a multi-objective optimization problem is solved to calculate optimal feed (initiator, solvent and monomer) flow-rate and reactor temperature profiles. These profiles minimize total amount of initiator fed to the reactor, polydispersity index of the final product, and batch time (t,f); subject to (a) the reactor dynamics, (b) a monomer conversion of above 0.99 at tf; and (c) a polymer weight-average molecular weight of 8,000 at tf. The results show that high-quality polymers at can be produced at lower operating costs by minimizing initiator usage and batch time.
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Details
- Title
- Product Quality Improvement in a High-Temperature Free-Radical Polymerization Reactor
- Creators
- Congling Quan - Drexel UniversityMasoud Soroush - Drexel UniversityMichael GradyAAC
- Publication Details
- 2003 American Control Conference; Denver, CO; USA; 4-6 June 2003, v 5, pp 3980-3985
- Conference
- 21st (Denver, Colorado, United States, 04 Jun 2003–06 Jun 2003)
- Publisher
- The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
- Resource Type
- Conference proceeding
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Chemical and Biological Engineering
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000186706200678
- Other Identifier
- 991019170353904721
InCites Highlights
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- Web of Science research areas
- Automation & Control Systems