Integrated scheduling for gasoline blending considering storage tanks and pipe network

An off-site system in a petroleum refining plant mainly consists of storage tanks, gasoline component blenders, and a pipe network that connects tanks with blenders. Therefore, in order to produce a required gasoline on time, these equipments have to be selected and used appropriately at the right time. However, previous studies have not taken into account the pipe network. In this paper, a novel scheduling model with the MILP method for gasoline blending in consideration of storage tanks and a pipe network is proposed. In order to model and formulate the pipe network and constraints, a previously-proposed scheduling model is extended with the use of the set theory. In this regard, two modeling techniques are introduced to reduce a computational cost. Through a case study of the gasoline-blending scheduling, the effectiveness of the proposed and integrated scheduling model is finally shown.