Model of balanced distribution and optimal scheduling of the oxygen system in iron and steel industry

In iron and steel industry, the conflict between the supply and demand of oxygen must be considered. Otherwise, the surplus amount beyond the inventory capacity of oxygen has to be diffused. By selectively turning on or off the units of the air separation system, and adjusting the production rate, the pressure rate, the liquefied rate and steam rate of each unit, the conflict between demand and production of oxygen can be reduced, the oxygen diffusion can be further reduced. Based on the analysis of the characteristic of oxygen operation from production, holding to consumption in a large scale iron and steel plant, this paper formulates the oxygen balance distribution and optimal scheduling problem as a linear programming model, in which the diffusion cost, pressure cost, liquefied cost, steam cost and setup cost of air separation system is minimized. The model is solved to optimality by using the CPLEX.