The PI spent a year at the National Center for Supercomputing (NCSA) looking at the potential applications of high performance computers to the solution of chemical engineering problems. Since then he has worked with NCSA in the area of developing network access to supercomputers. The Dow Chemical Company is an industrial partner of NCSA. The PI has also been working with Dow on the remote use of supercomputers via high speed, wide area networks. As a result of these activities, the PI and Dow are establishing a cooperative research program in the area of chemical process applications of high performance computers. The specific purpose of the project is to evaluate the current technology associated with frame accurate video recording applied to the interpretation and archival storage of scientific databases. Two databases: computed results from a complex chemical reactor simulation and measured data from an experimental investigation will provide the information used for the evaluation. Equipment and software assembled at Dow as an implementation of an NCSA project called "NCSA Video Macintosh - Producing Scientific Visualizations on a Desktop" will be used in the project. Four specific activities are planned: 1. Daily contact among the principals during the planning period for the initiation of the program; 2. Familiarization of graduate research assistants with the procedures and equipment employed in industrial laboratories; 3. Training of graduate research assistants in the use of contemporary high performance computing equipment; and 4. Design of the experimental apparatus involved in evaluating the performance of a flow reversal reactor.//
