Presidential Young Investigator Award: Kinetics of Phase Transfer Catalyzed Free Radical Polymerization

本研究涉及三个领域：(1)缩聚过程的设计与控制；(2)相转移催化自由基聚合动力学；(3)工业聚合过程的计算机辅助设计、分析与控制。根据上述(1)，方法是为多阶段聚合过程建立详细的数学模型，并进行广泛的实验以提取未知的动力学参数，并确认反应器动力学的模型预测。在(2)中，目标是阐明相转移聚合（PTC）的动力学，上面，随机状态估计技术和自适应控制方案将被应用于估计未测量的参数，如转化率，共聚物组成，链序列长度分布等。由于许多放热聚合反应器表现出稳态多重性、持续振荡、失控等特点，本文将对其稳态和动态行为进行分析。

This research is in three areas: (1) design and control of condensation polymerization processes, (2) kinetics of phase transfer catalyzed free radical polymerization, and (3) computer-aided design, analysis, and control of industrial polymerization processes. Under (1) above, the approach is to develop detailed mathematical models for the multi-stage polymerization processes and to carry out extensive experimentation to extract unknown kinetic parameters and to confirm model predictions of reactor dynamics. Under (2), the goal is to elucidate the kinetics of phase transfer polymerization (PTC), above, stochastic state estimation techniques and adaptive control schemes will be applied to estimate unmeasured parameters such as degree of conversion, copolymer composition, chain sequence length distribution, etc. Analysis of both steady state and dynamic behavior will be done because many exothermic polymerization reactors exhibit peculiarities such as steady state multiplicity, sustained oscillation, runaway, etc.