Full text
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| Author(s): |
Andre Augusto Cire
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Master's Dissertation |
| Press: | Campinas, SP. |
| Institution: | Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Computação |
| Defense date: | 2008-08-18 |
| Examining board members: |
Arnaldo Vieira Moura;
Zanoni Dias;
Eduardo Camponogara
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| Advisor: | Arnaldo Vieira Moura; Cid Carvalho de Souza |
| Abstract | |
This dissertation deals with a very difficult overly-constrained scheduling challenge: how to operate a large pipeline network in order to adequately transport oil derivatives and biofuels from refineries to local markets. Pipeline network systems are considered the major option for transporting these product types, in view of their many economic and environmental advantages. However, they pose serious operational difficulties related to product sequencing, flow rates and tank capacities. The challenge is how to schedule individual pumping operations, given the daily production and demand of each product, at each location in the network, over a given time horizon. In order to tackle this problem, we propose a novel hybrid approach which comprises two phases. Firstly, a planning phase decides the necessary volume transmission among depots to satisfy the given demands. Finally, a scheduling phase generates and schedules the pumping operations that guarantee the required volume transmission. This dissertation focuses on the scheduling phase, in which two new Constraint Programming (CP) models are proposed. The CP flexibility plays a key role in modeling and satisfying operational constraints that are usually overlooked in literature, but that are essential in rder to guarantee viable solutions. The full strategy was implemented and produced adequate and promising results when tested over 5 large real instances from Petrobras. These instances have a complex topology with around 30 interconnecting pipelines, over 30 different products in circulation, and about 14 distribution depots which harbor more than 200 tanks. (AU) | |