Effect of Caustic Addition in Epoxy Polymerization Process: A Single and Multi‐Objective Evolutionary Approach
Sasanka Raha, Saptarshi Majumdar, Kishalay Mitra · Macromolecular Theory and Simulations · 2004
Abstract Summary: An epoxy polymerization process is studied in semi‐batch mode. Caustic has a very critical influence on epoxy polymerization process, which is modeled as a set of highly nonlinear coupled ODE's (ordinary differential equations). Owing to the highly complicated, nonlinear domain of analysis, “Differential Evolution (DE)” and “Genetic Algorithm (GA)” are used as optimization tools to identify the $\overline M _{\rm n}$‐PDI Pareto set and study the best operating strategy with respect to NaOH addition. The moment of various oligomeric components during the semi‐batch polymerization is also presented for a better understanding of the process. This study demonstrates the potential of evolutionary optimization algorithm to identify various operating philosophies of a semi‐batch epoxy reactor for a targeted product quality. Pareto plot for epoxy polymerization process with intermediate NaOH addition varying from 0.0 to 1.0 kmol · m−3. image Pareto plot for epoxy polymerization process with intermediate NaOH addition varying from 0.0 to 1.0 kmol · m−3.