Short-term scheduling of crude oil operations in refinery with high-fusion-point oil and two transportation pipelines

Abstract

In some refineries, storage tanks are located at two different sites, one for low-fusion-point crude oil and the other for high one. Two pipelines are used to transport different oil types. Due to the constraints resulting from the high-fusion-point oil transportation, it is challenging to schedule such a system. This work studies the scheduling problem from a control-theoretic perspective. It proposes to use a hybrid Petri net method to model the system. It then finds the schedulability conditions by analysing the dynamic behaviour of the net model. Next, it proposes an efficient scheduling method to minimize the cost of high-fusion-point oil transportation. Finally, it gives a complex industrial case study to show its application.

Keywords:

• oil refinery
• crude oil operations
• hybrid Petri nets
• scheduling

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Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grants 61273036 and 61374068; the FDCT of Macau under grants 065/2013/A2 and 066/2012/A2.