Greedy approach for solving the capacitated vehicle routing problem of liquefied natural gas distribution to power plants

摘要

In LNG industries, how to decide the number of ships and their routes for transporting LNG to every demand location efficiently effects the minimization of total operational cost. Therefore, this paper provides a case study in Papua and proposes a model to determine the optimum ship route to transport LNG from an LNG production terminal to thirteen regasification terminals by considering both transportation cost and inventory cost. Distance, power plants demands, transportation cost, and inventory cost were further analyzed by using the greedy approach. In addition, the ship sizes were limited to four alternatives, which were 2500 m3, 7500 m3, 10000 m3, and 23000 m3. The result recommends the utilization of smaller size vessels with more frequent shipments compared to the earlier research on the same case study. It considers that the result will be more adaptable for changing water depth due to changing tides at particular ports.