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Thomas G. Tyler
Innovate: to initiate or pioneer. 
Volition: freedom of will, decision, choice. 
Innovolition: the will to create.
A Object-Oriented Implementation of a Chemical Waste Consolidation Expert System

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1. Background and Rationale


2. Interface Design
  • 2.1. The Chemical and Chemical Mixture Interface
  • 2.2. The Bottle or Transporter Interface
  • 2.3. The Drum Storage Interface


3. System Design
  • 3.1. System Environment
  • 3.2. The Waste Consolidation System Design Overview
  • 3.3. The Chemical Library: Class ChemBook
  • 3.4. The Bottle (Transporter) Library: Class BottleBook
  • 3.5. The Drum Library: Class DrumBook


4. Evaluation and Results
  • 4.1. Real-Time Application of Prototype
  • 4.2. Software and Logic Testing
  • 4.3. Usability Testing

5. Future Work

6. Conclusions

Bibliography and References

Appendix A. Example Drum Report

Appendix B. Chemical Compatibility Testing Data

4.2. Software and Logic Testing

It was expected that the core design may need several design cycles to be optimized [Pressman 1997]. The core software has had three major and several minor revisions. Hindsight is a powerful tool in software design, and further optimization will be fully possible from this developed platform. The input files for all the libraries are comma delineated data, and all major spreadsheet programs are capable of opening them. This fact has allowed extensive modification testing.

It was explained in section 2.1 that the method of binary compatibility testing is a reliable method of waste consolidation. The chemical compatibility routine was checked by running all possible binary combinations of chemicals from a 22-member representative list. The chemicals selected were representative of each of the major chemical types. The results of the comparisons are listed in Appendix B. These inclusive comparisons allow evaluation of the compatibility logic with entire categories of chemical types. The output from this routine has been checked for errors by several individuals with chemistry or chemistry-related degrees. The twenty-two are described in Table 4.1 along with their chemical type descriptors.

Table 4.1 Selected Chemicals For Chemical Compatibility Testing

Chemical Name

Chemical Descriptors

Acetic anhydride

Organic acid, Acid anhydride, Flammable

Acetonitrile

Organic solvent, Cyanogen, Flammable

Calcium chloride

Inorganic salt, Chloride

Dichloromethane

Halogenated, Organic solvent, Flammable

Ethanol

Organic solvent, Alcohol, Flammable

Ethyl acetate

Organic solvent, Ester, Flammable

Formaldehyde

Aldehyde, Organic solvent, Flammable

Glycerine

Organic solvent, Alcohol, Triol

Hexane

Organic solvent, Alkane, Flammable

Hydrochloric acid

Inorganic, Acid, Chloride, Mineral acid

Iron metal

Metal, Catalyst

Mercury solids

Liquid metal, Toxic, Persistant

Nitric acid

Inorganic, Acid, Oxidizer, Mineral acid

Nitrophenol

Organic, Aromatic, Alcohol, Nitro-

Potassium hydroxide

Base, Mineral Base, Hydroxide, Corrosive

Silver nitrate

Oxidizer, Nitrate, Reactive

Sodium hydroxide

Base, Mineral Base, Hydroxide, Corrosive

Sulfuric acid

Inorganic, Acid, Sulfate, Corrosive

Tetrahydrofuran

Organic, Ether, Cyclic hydrocarbon

Triethylamine

Organic, Amine, Base

Water

Inorganic solvent, Reactive

Xylene

Aromatic, Organic solvent

The optical disk filed with the Department of Computing Sciences of the project documents contains a file with a complete binary comparison of all possible combinations of the entire current chemical library of 130 compounds. These 8385 comparisons were surveyed for error and checked for accuracy.

The tests showed that the rules will flag any correlation between chemicals provided the descriptors will cross reference. Corrections had to be made for the organic base in the list, triethylamine, to be slightly reactive to acetic anhydride. The cross-referencing failed to correlate that the base was reactive to an anhydrous organic acid because the bases incompatibility was for acid and not for either organic acid or acid anhydride. Other examples of this type of minor error have led to an understanding that should be conveyed to the user through demonstration and complete explanation of the software’s algorithm.
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