A mathematical model for planning transportation of multiple petroleum products in a multi-pipeline system.

Abstract

A multiproduct Pipeline provides an economic way to transport large Volumes of refined petroleum products over long distances. In such a pipeline, different products are pumped back-to-back without any separation device between them. Sometimes, multiproduct pipelines can be connected together, resulting in a more complex system commonly named multi-pipeline system. This paper proposes a new discrete mathematical approach to solve short-term operational planning Of multi-pipeline systems for refined products. This model is based on a discrete approach that divides both the planning horizon into time intervals of equal duration and the individual polyducts into packages of equal volume each containing a single product. Numerical examples are solved in order to show the performance of the proposed model. All the instances are implemented with the OPL modeling language running CPLEX as solver.