Advanced control of propylene polimerizations in slurry reactors

• Main Authors: Bolsoni A., Lima E.L., Pinto J.C.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Brazilian Society of Chemical Engineering 2000-01-01
• Series: Brazilian Journal of Chemical Engineering
• Subjects: Predictive Control; Polymerization Reactors; Neural Networks; Melt Index
• Online Access: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0104-66322000000400021

The objective of this work is to develop a strategy of nonlinear model predictive control for industrial slurry reactors of propylene polymerizations. The controlled variables are the melt index (polymer quality) and the amount of unreacted monomer (productivity). The model used in the controller presents a linear dynamics and a nonlinear static gain given by a neuronal network MLP (multilayer perceptron). The simulated performance of the controller was evaluated for a typical propylene polymerization process. It is shown that the performance of the proposed control strategy is much better than the one obtained with the use of linear predictive controllers for setpoint tracking control problems.