Multi Objective Dynamic Optimization Study of Butylated Urea Formaldehyde Resin Process in a Batch Reactor

Butylated urea formaldehyde (BUF) is a key intermediate for manufacturing paint and coating. The quality of BUF resins can be measured in terms of the concentration of free formaldehyde in the BUF resins and the extent of butylation. We in this work present an optimal control study to obtain minimum free formaldehyde concentration and minimum butanol concentration at the end of the batch operation. Reactor temperature is used as the manipulated variable and optimum temporal reactor temperature profiles are obtained using control vector parameterization approach. The two aforementioned criteria are observed to be mutually conflicting and hence the multi-objective optimal control problem is solved in this work yielding the pareto optimal curve showing the trade-off solutions of the MOO problem. Such pareto optimal curve helps the operator to choose an operating condition for a desired operation.