Online dynamic optimization studies of autocatalytic esterification in the semi batch reactor for handling disturbance and uncertainty

Abstract

A Catalyzed Esterification of Propionic Anhydride with 2-Butanol in the semi batch reactor which involves complex pathways of the autocatalytic mechanism, is producing sec-butyl propionate and propionic acid. An online dynamic-cascaded based optimization is an effective way to handle the effect uncertainty and disturbance within semi batch process. The re-optimization and control problems are solved separately in two layers. The online optimization strategy includes an integration of dynamic re-optimizer, i.e. orthogonal collocation (OC) method in maximizing profit, estimator, i.e. Cubature Kalman Filter and controller, i.e. adaptive Proportional Integrator Derivative (PID). The re-optimization mechanism is activated conditionally by using simple trigger, i.e. ±5% of conversion as active constraint. The simulation results show that the proposed strategy offers a large improvement of reactor's performance in handling uncertainty and disturbance where re-optimized temperature and feed flowrate trajectories obtained able to keep the conversion within acceptable range (on-spec).