The closed-open truck and loader routing problem for biomass transportation from satellite storage locations to a bioenergy plant

Abstract

• We formulate the truck and loader routing problem for biomass transportation. • The model considers the closed routing of trucks and the open routing of loaders. • A numerical study demonstrates application to a region in Southwestern Ontario. • The developed heuristics-based solution method outperforms commercial solvers. The complex daily operation and movement of costly machines transporting biomass to bioenergy plants can significantly affect the economic viability of the system. In particular, while a truck should have a closed route from/to the bioenergy plant, a mobile loader may have different departing and returning locations. This study formulated the closed-open routing of mobile machines as a mixed-integer linear programming model considering challenging modeling factors such as multi-trips, multi-visits, and synchronized loading operations. The formulated problem prescribes daily schedules for trucks and mobile loaders to minimize the total cost of transporting biomass from satellite storage locations to a bioenergy plant. A novel constructive heuristics-based method is developed in this research to solve the problem effectively for practical use. The numerical studies showed that the model correctly made operating schedules for real-life examples. The developed solution method outperformed the commercial solvers by reducing the total costs and finding feasible solutions in difficult cases, which the commercial solvers could not do. Further analysis at the branch-and-bound root node showed the effectiveness of the developed heuristics to strengthen the branch-and-bound procedure compared to the CPLEX heuristics-and-cuts.