A continuous-time formulation for scheduling crude oil operations in a terminal with a refinery pipeline

The reception, mixture, delivery, and processing of crude oil at a refinery are modeled and validated. We employ a continuous-time model based on priority-slots and a multi-operation sequencing approach. The refinery's desired qualities are defined as equivalent to the terminal mixtures, thus streamlining the formulation and eliminating any bilinear terms in the equations related to pipeline delivery. The goal is to find an optimized schedule that satisfies all constraints, for which an MINLP model is proposed and solved. However, by ruling out mixtures in tanks, the formulation is reduced to a manageable MILP model. Also, the Relax & Fix strategy can be used to determine an optimized schedule of operations over a time horizon in a timely and cost-effective manner. This work presents an innovative solution to the complex challenge of crude oil reception, mixture, pipeline delivery, and refinery processing.