Multi-objective optimization of refined oil distribution system considering distribution cost and oil depot utilization

Refined oil distribution refers to the process of transporting oil products from the upstream refinery to the downstream sales depot according to the transportation plan. In addition to guaranteeing the economic benefits of the refined oil distribution system, the high utilization efficiency of the refined oil distribution facilities should be maintained as far as possible to improve the overall operating efficiency of the refined oil distribution system. At present, for the optimization of refined oil distribution system, the existing domestic and foreign refined oil distribution plans usually take the lowest distribution cost as the goal, while ignoring the utilization efficiency of transit oil depot. In addition, as an important node in the refined oil distribution system, the inventory management of the transit oil depot is extremely critical. If the inventory management of the oil depot is chaotic, ineffective or inefficient, it will not only harm the efficient operation of the refined oil distribution system, but even affect the normal supply of refined oil. In this paper, based on the existing research, four evaluation indexes of the utilization rate of oil depot were introduced, including turnover times, per capita turnover, running cost per ton of oil and working time per ton of oil, and based on these, whether the transit oil depot put into use is in a state of efficient operation. After that. The operation cost of oil product transportation and transit oil depot as well as utilization efficiency of transit oil depot were comprehensively considered, and constraints such as supply capacity of refinery, demand of selling oil depot, transportation capacity and storage of oil depot were taken into account. The multi-objective mixed integer linear programming model of the refined oil distribution system was constructed with the minimum cost of the system and the maximum turnover of the transfer terminal as the objective function, and the model was solved by the augmented ε-constraint method. The research results have been successfully applied to a refined oil distribution system in northwest China. Through the verification of field real data on the spot, it can be concluded that the turnover times and per capita turnover of the transit oil depot can be increased by 48.1% and 54.3%, respectively, and the operation cost and operation time of ton oil can be decreased by 52.8% and 58.3%, respectively. The results of this study have certain guiding significance for the formulation of regional refined oil supply and transportation plan and transit oil depot operation plan.