A Continuous-Time Approach to Multiproduct Pipeline Scheduling

DIEGO C. CAFARO, JAIME CERDÁ

Lappeenranta, Finlandia

Simposio; ESCAPE 13; 2003

Lappeenranta University of Technology

Product distribution planning is a critical stage in oil refinery operation. Pipelines provide the most reliable mode for delivering huge amounts of petroleum products through long distances at low operating cost. In this paper, the short-term scheduling of a multiproduct pipeline receiving a number of liquid products from a single refinery source to distribute them among several depots has been studied. The pipeline operation usually implies to accomplish a sequence of product pumping runs of suitable length in order to meet customer demands at the promised dates while satisfying all operational constraints. This work introduces a novel MILP mathematical formulation that neither uses time discretization nor division of the pipeline into a number of single-product packs. In this way, a more rigorous problem representation ensuring the optimality of the proposed schedule has been developed. Moreover, a severe reduction in binary variables and CPU time with regards to previous approaches was also achieved. A real-world case study involving a single pipeline, four oil products and five distribution depots was successfully solved.