Development of Polymer Resins using Neural Networks

Abstract

The development of polymer resins can benefit from the application of neural networks, using its great ability to correlate inputs and outputs. In this work we have developed a procedure that uses neural networks to correlate the end-user properties of a polymer with the polymerization reactor's operational condition that will produce that desired polymer. This procedure is aimed at speeding up the development of new resins and help finding the appropriate operational conditions to produce a given polymer resin; reducing experimentation, pilot plant tests and therefore time and money spent on development. The procedure shown in this paper can predict the reactor's operational condition with an error lower than 5%.