Detailed steady-state simulation of tubular reactors for LDPE production: Influence of numerical integration accuracy

Abstract

This document contains the post-print pdf-version of the refereed paper: "Detailed steady-state simulation of tubular reactors for LDPE production: influence of numerical integration accuracy."

Model-Based Optimization of the Cooling System of an Industrial Tubular LDPE Reactor

“…Two approaches can be used to obtain the reactor steady-state, that is, a direct simulation as a plug flow reactor or by approximating the reactor as a cascade of continuous stirred tank reactors . Although both approaches should yield similar predictions, it has been shown in ref that this is not a trivial issue and that an accurate discretization is required to ensure this in practice. Otherwise, even completely different trends can be observed.…”

“…Mathematical models have proven to be valuable tools for analyzing and optimizing the operation, control, and design of chemical processes. Also for tubular LDPE reactors, models of different complexity have been employed for (i) steady-state simulation − and optimization − as well as (ii) transient simulation − and optimization. − All examples prove that model-based approaches can lead to significant improvements for the manufacturers. Most studies did not investigate possible improvements due to adaptations in the cooling circuit.…”