Nonlinear Control for Maximum Production Rate of Latexes of Well-Defined Polymer Composition

In this work, on-line strategies based on calorimetry were used to maximize the production of vinyl acetate/butyl acrylate latexes under safe conditions, maintaining simultaneously the copolymer composition of the polymer at predefined values. It was also shown that these strategies were able to avoid monomer accumulation in the reactor, and hence potentially dangerous thermal runaway situations, without any deleterious effect on the polymer composition, when a sudden inhibition was induced by deliberately adding a solution of hydroquinone. For this purpose, nonlinear model-based control strategies and conventional feedback controllers were used.