Abstract
This paper considers the pipeline network design problem (PND) in ethanol transportation, with a view to providing robust and efficient computational tools to assist decision makers in evaluating the technical and economic feasibility of ethanol pipeline network designs. Such tools must be able to address major design decisions and technical characteristics, and estimate network construction and operation costs to any time horizon. The specific context in which the study was conducted was the ethanol industry in Sao Paulo. Five instances were constructed using pseudo-real data to test the methodologies developed.
Highlights
People use networks daily in a wide range of contexts
The mathematical programming formulation (MF) was programmed in the commercial software AIMMS [23] and solved with the AOA package available in AIMMS
MF produced the best solution for each case, which was obtained in low runtimes, as shown
Summary
People use networks daily (sometimes unwittingly) in a wide range of contexts. Telephony networks, logistics networks for freight transportation and distribution networks (water, energy) provide services that are essential to modern life and, must be properly designed to ensure service quality and meet user demands. Brazil is projected to be both a major producer and supplier of biofuels, biodiesel and ethanol These fuels are gaining importance on the world stage in view of the environmental, technological and economic impacts caused by global dependence on fossil fuels, oil [1]. This study aims to provide robust and efficient computational tools to assist decision makers in evaluating the technical and economic feasibility of ethanol pipeline network designs. Such tools must be able to address major design decisions and technical characteristics, and estimate network construction and operation costs to any time horizon. Optimization approaches taken to solving the problem; Section 5 reports the results and conclusions; and Section 6 offers some final remarks on the study
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