Modeling of Linear and Exponential Growth and Decay Equations and Testing Them on Pre- and Post-War-Coal Production in Nigeria: An Operations Research Approach

Abstract

Despite Nigeria's huge reserves in coal resource, the vanishing coal production over the years has been a source of grave concern to many who are interested in witnessing the diversification of Nigeria's energy sector to non-petroleum resources. Within the framework of Operations Research, linear growth and decay equations on one hand, and exponential growth and decay equations on the other hand, were modeled for coal production in Nigeria. Subsequently, the growth and decay models for linear and exponential considerations were tested on the annual coal production data with a view to establishing the appropriate characters/features of the profiles of Nigeria coal production from 1916 to 2001, under two scenarios, namely: Scenario 1—pre-Nigerian civil war period, 1916–1966; and Scenario 2—post-Nigerian civil war period, 1973–2001. The findings gave fascinating insights into the features of the Nigerian coal production. Thus in a nutshell, it was found that the pre-war period of coal production, 1916–1966 approximated to the linear growth trend. While the post-war period of coal production, 1973–2001 was close to the feature of exponential-decay curve. It is expected that the findings obtained from this investigation would help in planning for the rebirth of Nigerian coal production and its utilization in energy generation.