Abstract
Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is an important urban gas source in China. Before supplied to customers by pipeline supply systems, LPG is stored in tanks in LPG vaporization stations. Designers usually decide the number and the size of storage tanks by their experience during constructions of vaporization stations. These decisions are usually not best and most economical. To solve the problem, a compact mixed integer nonlinear programming model has been developed in this paper. The objective is to minimize annual storage cost of the vaporization station. The model has been transformed into a general nonlinear programming model by transforming integer variables and 0-1 variables into continuous variables. One LPG vaporization station was taken as an example to illustrate the usage of the model. The results show that the optimal storage scheme can be determined accurately and quickly by the model and about 15% of storage cost can be saved every year after optimization.
Highlights
There were several hundred millions of people using solid fuels partially or exclusively for cooking and heating in China, most of these in rural areas, in 2007 [1]
The results show that the optimal storage scheme can be determined accurately and quickly by the model and about 15% of storage cost can be saved every year after optimization
The Chinese government has been taking firm steps to develop its urban gas industry [2,3,4]. With some advantages, such as convenient transportation, easy operation, high energy density, and low pollution, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is a principal residential fuel for a lot of Chinese people not served by natural gas infrastructure [5]
Summary
There were several hundred millions of people using solid fuels (biomass and coal) partially or exclusively for cooking and heating in China, most of these in rural areas, in 2007 [1]. The Chinese government has been taking firm steps to develop its urban gas industry [2,3,4] With some advantages, such as convenient transportation, easy operation, high energy density, and low pollution, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is a principal residential fuel for a lot of Chinese people not served by natural gas infrastructure [5]. The model minimizes the annual storage cost of a LPG vaporization station in consideration of guaranteeing its normal and safe operation. To solute this model conveniently, integer variables and 0-1 variables are transformed to some continuous variables. In order to illustrate the mathematical model, the economically optimal selection of storage tanks is done for a LPG vaporization station in Guangdong, using a mathematical software package LINGO [7], and results are analyzed
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