Study on Optimal Strategy of Grade Transition in Industrial Fluidized Bed Gas-Phase Polyethylene Production Process

A model of grade transition is presented for a commercialized fluidized bed gas-phase polyethylene production process. The quantity of off-specification product and the time of grade transition can be minimized by the optimization of operating variables, such as polymerization temperature, the ratio of hydrogen to ethylene, the ratio of co-monomer to ethylene, feed rate of catalyst, and bed level. A new performance index, the ratio of melt flow (MFR), is included in the objective function, for restraining the sharp adjustment of operation variables and narrowing the distribution of molecular weight of the resin. It is recommended that catalyst feed rate and bed level are decreased in order to reduce the grade transition time and the quantity of off-specification product. This optimization problem is solved by an algorithm of sequential quadratic programming (SQP) in MATLAB. There is considerable difference between the forward transition and reverse transition of grade with regard to the operating variab

Study on Optimal Strategy of Grade Transition in Industrial Fluidized Bed Gas-Phase Polyethylene Production Process

A model of grade transition is presented for a commercialized fluidized bed gas-phase polyethylene production process. The quantity of off-specification product and the time of grade transition can be minimized by the optimization of operating variables, such as polymerization temperature, the ratio of hydrogen to ethylene, the ratio of co-monomer to ethylene, feed rate of catalyst, and bed level. A new performance index, the ratio of melt flow (MFR), is included in the objective function, for restraining the sharp adjustment of operation variables and narrowing the distribution of molecular weight of the resin. It is recommended that catalyst feed rate and bed level are decreased in order to reduce the grade transition time and the quantity of off-specification product. This optimization problem is solved by an algorithm of sequential quadratic programming (SQP) in MATLAB. There is considerable difference between the forward transition and reverse transition of grade with regard to the operating variables due to the non-linearity of the system. The grade transition model is extended to a high space time yield (STY) process with the so-called condensed model operation. In the end, an optimization strategy for multi-product transition is proposed with two-level optimization of the objective function J(x,u) on the basis of the optimal grade transition model. A sequential transition of six commercial polyethylene grades is illustrated for an optimal multi-product operation.