Development of refinery scheduling system using mixed integer programming and expert system

This paper presents a hybrid refinery scheduling system combining mathematical programming model and expert system. Mixed-integer linear programming models for crude oil movement between units are merged into the expert system that is for qualitative issues concerning crude vessel unloading operations. The target problem ranging from the crude unloading to the crude charging to distillation towers is decomposed into several module problems for efficiency. Compared with existing scheduling approaches for oil movement, the proposed hybrid refinery scheduling system is very effective in dealing with timing decisions involving vessel unloading operations due to the advantages of an expert system. Since the proposed scheduling system can generate solutions so fast, it is expected to play a key role in the real processes.