Abstract
This paper investigates how the selection of the optimal operating point for a continuous industrial polymerization reactor affects its controllability and resiliency. In this case, it is desired to operate the reactor such that the molecular weight average of the product is maintained on specification with the minimum nominal feed rate of initiator. Measures of controllability and resiliency predicted by linear analysis methods are compared with the results of rigorous static nonlinear analysis for this problem. It can be shown that as the initiator flow rate is reduced, the control problem becomes more difficult in that the process become more ill-conditioned. On the other hand, because of the increased sensitivity of the primary output to the coolant flow rate, the regulatory response of a simple decentralized PI control scheme actually improves with decreasing initiator flow. Most of the observed phenomena are either qualitatively and in many cases quantitatively predicted using linear analysis, despite the extremely nonlinear behavior of the reactor.
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