A planning model for multiple blending schemes

The key of production planning of refineries is to determine the production planning of units and blending schemes of blends in each period of the plan horizon, since they affect the effective utilization of components of refineries and hence profits. The optimization is difficult, because of many complicated product production–consumption relationships in production processes, which are closely related to the running modes of the units. Additionally, the blending products, such as gasoline and diesel, may use multiple blending schemes for their production that increase the complexity of the problem. This paper models the production planning problem as a mixed integer nonlinear programming. Computational experiments for a refinery show the effectiveness of the model. The optimal results give the effective utilization of the self-produced components and increase of the profit.

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