Synthesis of Poly(propylene terepthalate) (PPT) is normally carried out (in batch as well as semi-batch mode) in a combined mixture of TPA (terephthalic acid) and PG (1,3-propanediol) with a suitable catalyst in two steps: esterification and polycondensation. Functional group modeling technique is used here to analyse the semibatch PPT formation system. Objectives of multiobjective optimization are to maximize productivity and the proportionality among desired functional groups at minimum possible processing time. But these conflicting objectives lead to an undesired population of other undesired functional groups. Several constraints are incorporated into the system to tackle this situation. Real-coded NSGA-II (Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm) has been utilized as an evolutionary optimization technique to solve the problem. Copyright © 2005 IFAC.

Kishalay Mitra

Department of Chemical Engineering

Saptarshi Majumdar

R. Gopinath

Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IITH) is a premier institute of science and technology established in 2008. IITH has been consistently ranked in the&nbsp;<a href="https://iith.ac.in/reports/" rel="noopener noreferrer">top 10 institutes</a>&nbsp;in India for Engineering&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nirfindia.org/2021/EngineeringRanking.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">according to NIRF</a>&nbsp;making it one of the most coveted schools for science and technology in the country.

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Journal	IFAC Proceedings Volumes (IFAC-PapersOnline)
Publisher	IFAC Secretariat
ISSN	14746670