.
The goal of the project is to develop and implement a computational tool for
identifying environmentally benign and cost effective novel adsorbents based on
computer-aided molecular design (CAMD) for NORM removal from flowback and produced waters generated during natural gas
fracking operations.
The computational tool is based on multi-agent modelling techniques. Agent
based programming has emerged as a new paradigm for the conceptualization,
design, analysis and solving optimization problems. It is a nature-inspired
technique, which supports cooperative search by the self-organization of a
group of software agents situated in an environment with certain sharing public
knowledge. Therefore, multi-agent system is a network of software agents that
interact in an autonomous and collaborative way to solve problems that are
beyond the capacities of individual software agent. A multi-agent system
distributes problem solving and computational resources and capabilities across
a network of interconnected software agents. Since it is decentralized and distributed,
various difficulties related to resource and performance limitations and
bottlenecks can be alleviated. Thus, it exhibits an enhanced performance with
respect to computational efficiency, reliability, extensibility, robustness,
maintainability, responsiveness, and flexibility Kacprzyk
et al. (2013).
Some of the software agents considered in the project are: