An optimization study on the pyrolysis of polystyrene in a batch reactor

The pyrolysis process of polystyrene (PS) has been investigated to find optimal temperature profiles which minimize the reaction time and the reaction energy required for a given conversion in a batch reactor. Assuming that the fragmentation of PS in pyrolysis is described by the mechanism of random and/or specific degradations, we used a continuous kinetic model for solving three moment equations to determine the transient change of molecular weight distributions (MWD) of the polymers. We then converted this independent-variable minimization problem using a coordinate transformation to a dependent-variable minimization problem that yields the optimal temperature profiles as its solution. The optimization results obtained in this study encompass the cases of different objective functions which cover minimum reaction time, minimum energy consumed, or any combination of these. It has turned out that maintaining the reaction temperature constant at an optimal level is the best solution in this optimization problem. An economic cost function also has been introduced as the third objective function to be minimized in addition to the reaction time and the reaction energy. This new function can serve as a convenient measure to judge the performance of the pyrolysis process minimizing the involved cost.