Continuous‐time scheduling formulation for straight pipelines

Pipelines represent the most cost‐effective way of transporting large quantities of refined petroleum products over large distances but can be challenging to operate. In this article, we propose a new mixed‐integer linear programming formulation for scheduling straight pipelines with multiple single and dual purpose nodes. The model allows for simultaneous injections and deliveries, and interacting pumping runs, in which a segment of the pipeline simultaneously receives material from its refinery and upstream segment. In contrast to previous batch centric models, it uses segment dependent coordinates. To make it efficient by design, we rely on generalized disjunctive programming and develop disjunctions for which the convex hull reformulation is simple (roughly the same number of variables and constraints as its big‐M counterpart). Through the solution of a set of test cases from the literature, we show a better utilization of the pipeline capacity that is translated into a lower makespan. © 2016 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 63: 1923–1936, 2017