Industrial Application of Process Systems to Improve Specialty Batch Polymerisation Process

There are relatively few industrial applications of process systems to the specialty batch process industry (as compared to bulk continuous or even bulk batch process industry). However, inherent flexibility of these processes can be exploited to increase productivity and product quality. This study is based on a real industrial example of fed-batch polymerisation of ethylene oxide with a base alcohol using an integrated flexible recipe framework. The model parameters of equation based dynamic models have been estimated with real plant data. The objective of the application is to find optimal values for initial variables and controller settings to maximise process profitability. Considerable improvement in process profitability is achieved through a master recipe improvement system (off-line application of the dynamic model). The paper concludes with recommendations to modify conventional practice through the proposed integrated framework.