State Estimation and Property Control in an MMA-MA Copolymerization Reactor

An experimental study was performed to establish the validity of an on-line state estimator for a semibatch MMA-MA copolymerization reactor by using on-line densitometer and viscometer under two different operating conditions; one without additional solvent feed and the other with solvent fed additionally. A conventional extended Kalman filter (EKF) was used as the state estimator and the experiment was conducted for the purpose of application to the control of copolymer properties. Further analysis was made by using off-line measurement data for the mole fraction of MMA in the remaining monomers and the solid content. It was found that the EKF could provide a good estimate for the states of the copolymerzation system ...