Optimization Plan of Refrigerated Container Refueling Strategies in Transit

Abstract

Containerization and multimodal transport are the development direction of railway cold-chain transportation. The increasing market demand also put new requirements on railway cold-chain transportation. The fact that China is a country covering vast territory with backward cold-chain transport equipment restricts the range of railway refrigerated freight transport. Therefore railway cold-chain transportation lost its comparative advantage that combined large freight volume and long transport distance. For solving this problem, railway transportation department uses 45ft integrated diesel-electric refrigerated container as cold-chain carrier, at the same time, adopts stop and refueling strategies in transit to extent continuous refrigerating time. Due to China’s railway cold-chain transportation is still in early stages, the location of gas stations along the route is uncertain and the refueling plan is lack of scientificity, the efficiency of railway refrigerated container transportation can be improved obviously. For extending the depth of railway cold-chain transportation and promoting the development of containerization and multimodal transport, this paper considers the features of railway cold-chain transportation in China and the method of using 45ft integrated diesel-electric refrigerated container. By setting the minimum cost as the objective function and involve other constraint condition in railway cold-chain transportation, this paper gives a optimization plan of refrigerated container refueling strategies in transit based on dynamic programming. Based on the research results on optimization plan, railway transportation department can reduce the time of refueling-stop and number of gas station which are unnecessary to reduce the cost of railway container freight station building, improve the efficiency and quality of railway cold-chain transportation.