Attainment Of Kinetic Parameters And Model Validation For Nylon-6 Process

This work presents the simulation of the hydrolytic polymerization process of Nylon-6in a lab-scale semi-batch reactor, using e-caprolactam as monomer and acetic acid as monofunctional acid chain terminator. The kinetic scheme comprises 6 reactions: 3 main reactions, 2 side reactions associated with the cyclic dimer formation and one monofunctional acid termination. Operating conditions were obtained from previous definitions and kinetic parameters were estimated from experimental data. The proposed optimization problem to estimate the kinetic parameters was solved by the Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) and Genetic Algorithm (GA). It was shown that both methods are able to determine the final solution with good precision. The validity of the model was confirmed by comparison of the results obtained by computer simulation using the software Aspen Polymer Plus® and the process real data. © 2014 Elsevier B.V.3314831488Mansoornejad, B., Mostoufi, N., Jalali-Farahani, F., A hybrid GA-SQP optimization technique for determination of kinetic parameters of hydrogenation reactions (2008) Computer and Chemical Engineering, 32, pp. 1447-1455Funai, F., Melo, D.N.C., Lima, N.M.N., Maciel Filho, R., Simulation and application of response surface methodology to a nylon-6 hydrolytic polymerization in a semibatch reactor (2013) Journal of Applied Polymer Science, 127, pp. 2910-2921Arai, Y., Tai, K., Teranishi, H., Tagawa, T., Kinetics of hydrolytic polymerization of e-caprolactam: 3. Formation of cyclic dimmer (1981) Polymer, 22 (2), pp. 273-277Gupta, S.K., Kumar, A., (1987), Reaction engineering of step-growth polymerization, Plenum Press, New York, U.SLima, N.M.N., Liñan, L.Z., Manenti, F., Maciel Filho, R., Embiruçu, M., Wolf Maciel, M.R., (2013), Novel two-steps optimal control of batch, polymerization reactors and application to PMMA, production for the fabrication of artificial bone tissue, Computer Aided Chemical Engineering, 32, 163-168Melo, D.N.C., (2005), Estratégia de otimização em duas camadas: aplicação para processos de hidrogenação em reatores catalíticos trifásicos, Ph.D. Thesis, FEQ/Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, BrazilCarroll, D.L., (2001), www.cuaerospace.com/carroll/ga.html, Fortran GA - Genetic Algorithm Driver. Accessed on 20/07/2011Ramteke, M., Gupta, S.K., Kinetic Modeling and Reactor Simulation and Optimization of Industrially Important Polymerization Processes: a Perspective (2011) International journal of chemical reactor engineering, 9 (1), pp. 1-54Gupta, S.K., Garg, S., (2013), Multiobjective Optimization Using Genetic Algorithm, Advances in Chemical Engineering, 43, 205-24