Effective Coordination of Simultaneous Delivery Flows into Receipt Terminals of Multiproduct Pipelines

摘要

This work presents a new continuous-time mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) formulation for developing the detailed schedule of single-source pipelines by allowing the execution of simultaneous deliveries to multiple receipt terminals. The model takes into account strict operational constraints restricting the flow rates at different pipeline segments and the delivery rates of products into each terminal. The problem goal is to minimize the flow restart and stoppage costs through accomplishing the least number of pumping operations. The solution to a real-world case study using the proposed model presents significant reductions in the operational cost and the CPU time with regards to previous contributions, even accounting for more realistic operating conditions.