Reception, mixture, and transfer in a crude oil terminal

The aim of this work is the modeling and validation of a process of reception, mixture and delivery of crude oil in a terminal. Each tank at the terminal receives different oil qualities from different cargos. Constraints are imposed to ensure material balance and operating rules. Inventory levels in the tanks are discretized. Crude oil should be transferred to the refinery according to a schedule of volumes and qualities. Linear constraints with an adjustment term for composition discrepancies are formulated to force the concentration in a tank to be equal to the concentration of the outlet volume. The problem consists in finding an optimized schedule that meets the constraints. A MILP model is proposed and solved for specific cases. In order to achieve good results in an affordable time, the rolling horizon strategy (RHS) is applied to determine the optimal schedule of crude oil operations over a time horizon.