Modeling and simulation of a high-pressure polyethylene tubular reactor

The complex world of polymerization has become an important topic for research due mainly to the great investments it demands and the difficulty in operation of the huge plants that exist to produce polymers. Many papers have been written about this, most of them focusing on the reactor performance and its stability. In the present work, a model and simulation for the high-pressure polyethylene tubular reactor has been made, but considering not only the performance of the reactor by separate but also its interaction with the whole mass balance, in such a way that an integrated model is obtained to study various operating conditions and their effect on exit monomer conversion, peak temperature and number and weight degree of polymerization. In this work MATLAB/SIMULINK software is used to model and simulate the complete process. The aim of this study is to make a suitable model for control purposes, in order to try, in the future, different schemes since the point of view of control. The mass balance involves 13 CSTR Continuous Stirred Tank Reactor, but more of them can be added to the model. Also, the reactor is simulated using a set of 10 highly nonlinear stiff differential equations.