Online optimizing control of emulsion polymerization processes with evaporative cooling

This work aims at optimizing the productivity of emulsion homopolymerization processes with evaporative cooling. A dynamic model of emulsion polymerization processes is extended by the inclusion of vaporization from the liquid phase in the reactor to the gaseous phase. The multi-component gas-liquid mass transfer phenomenon is described by the Maxwell-Stefan diffusion equations. An online optimization problem for maximizing the productivity with the minimum usage of nitrogen is formulated in the MPC framework. Simulation results are presented for the homopolymerization of vinyl acetate for an industrial scale reactor operated in semi-batch mode. The results show that a significantly higher productivity can be achieved by the proposed approach.