A Mixed Integer Programming Approach for Scheduling Commodities in a Pipeline

This paper addresses the problem of developing an optimisation model to aid the operational decision-making process on pipeline systems. The model is applied on a real world pipeline, which connects an inland refinery to a harbour, conveying different types of commodities. The optimisation model was developed based on mixed integer linear programming (MILP) with uniform time discretisation. The MILP well-known computational burden was avoided by the problem domain decomposition. Simulation examples have demonstrated that the optimisation model was able to define new operating points to the pipeline system, providing significant cost saving.