Computational Design Platforms
Green Technology Designs Platform

Needs Assessments

The adoption of sophisticated instruments and techniques to undertake otherwise tedious time-consuming tasks such as biodiesel reactors and bioreactors design and analysis, and or impeller designs often requires the aid of computer systems that supports computation-intensive operations. The aggressive prospective adoption of green fuel, both ethanol and biodiesel,  as attested to the number new ventures evolving from home-based hobbies, places additional demands on the development of computation intensive systems that are required to support these young, viable but cash strapped operations. Assessing the needs of a computation intensive computer system for such ventures for constructing the bases for crafting a effective specification for the development of such software, is best met by a related worst-case scenario-construct venture.

In general, a lone hobbyist scavenges tools and equipment to build a renewable energy process, and then refines the designs over a period of months and may be even years initially mostly to meet personal needs. Then the process appears well developed and the hobbyist then desires to develop a full-scale commercial venture based on that design. unfortunately fluid dynamics of bounded regions do not scale up well and the design has to be scaled up based partly on computation-intensive designs. The software embodying the applicable computational algorithms as well as the mathematical descriptions of the engineering systems on which the algorithms are based, however, must be developed from specifications constructed on the scientific knowledge-base underpinning the designs.

The computational needs of such operations therefore are best described by the following tasks that become necessary with the evolution of the venture:

• Process equipment designs;
• Computation intensive Automated testing;
• Production control performance-predictive continual  computation

These characteristics then define the prevailing market for which the software demand exists.

Program Method

On the basis of the delineated computational needs, clearly the program method for deploying a computation intensive system for such ventures must surmise that the computation intensive task entails several forms of tasks that are distinctly different, must perform the tasks by on-demand computation, and must support a venture operation characterized by

• limited funds to begin with, but with absolute need for the product; and as such is a customer without much funds to but large ticket items;
• in a growth stage of a venture and therefore can afford a large ticket item in some years to come but needs the item currently;
• ownership that is not very knowledgeable in the underpinning sciences of the process even if in possession of seemingly working process.

and are as listed in the sequence listed in Figure 1. However, for corporations that are well-funded these characteristic consideration do not apply and as such the program must allow for enough flexibility to accommodate that situation as well. In any event,

several factors impact the program method for the adoption of the system. The ownership costs of these computer systems however also impact the disposition to its adoption, and as such, the program supports compartmentalization of the tasks for purchase of components as need, while being incrementally growable, be of minimalist architecture but efficaciously functional at every growth-stage of the venture, and be entirely scalable.

      Fig. 1 Program Steps for Computation Intensive System
                   Deployment

Initial Deployment: Venture Start-Up Stage:

• Single computer for-all-use computations
• Results Print
• Single Screen/Monitor Client
• module selection dynamic loading and unloading and clean up of computation results

Functionality Enhancement: Venture Growth Stage:

• Distribution of Computational Components
• Results Print
• Multi-Single Screen/Monitor functionality: Operations and Administration Clients
• On-demand addition of Computation Support System

Specifications Development

The software developed to support the above venture development program method must clearly be of a fully distributed multi-process architecture at the very least, and supported with a relational data base; other data management software pieces as necessary may then be included for completion.

As a computation system, the bulk of the task is placed/performed in the server-side applications, and hence the server-side application(s) must also support, as per the requirement of prospective use for automated testing, the support of related computational needs. Accordingly, the server Applications must be divided into Computation Platforms and Computation Modules: All the components that actually perform the computations must be separated from the Platforms and into individual units, computation Modules. The Platform will simply have the task of managing the computations through the functionalities:

 Table 1. List of Platform Tasks Applications

Platforms Tasks Applications	Method Program Steps
Selection, loading & unloading Modules	(4)
Clean up of computation results	(4)
Grid-Computing Support	(8)
Local and Network IPC	(1), (5), (7), (8)

The Server Application must be multi-threaded and support virtually pervasive data exchange. All the computational server components must support grid-computing to meet on-demand computation capability, the data management and computation functionalities must be separate. At a minimum, a thread should be provided for each of the Program Method sets given in the Table 1.

The Client Software actually should be a collection of software pieces as well, for supporting the Computation Data entry, Computation invocation and results access and display, System administration, and support other needs as may be deemed to enhance the overall functionality.

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