Abstract
An optimal control methodology is applied to the goal of lowering the reaction time while maintaining low polydispersity in living free-radical polymerization. An illustration is provided using a heat flux to optimize the temperature profile for living free-radical polymerization of styrene in a plug flow reactor. The reactor designs show that distributed heat flux along the length of the reactor can reduce the reaction time significantly for a given conversion. The reduction in residence time comes at the expense of a modest increase in polydispersity. A reference simulation with no optimization shows a conversion of 85% after 70 h and a final polydispersity of 1.31. Optimization of a distributed heat flux results in a conversion of 83% after only 33 h while the polydispersity rises slightly to 1.39. The theoretical designs, although not proven to be globally optimal, are of high quality.
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