An efficient decomposition approach for the low-energy scheduling of a straight multiproduct pipeline

Abstract This paper proposes a hybrid-time mixed integer linear programming model for low-energy scheduling of single-source multiproduct pipelines. The model divides the time horizon into slots by event points of batches reaching stations and fixed points of electricity price changing. Through this division, some practical factors are easily modelled as linear items, including time-varying electricity price and flowrate limits related to interfaces. The key technology for this model is the initialization of all time points’ sequence, so a decomposition approach is developed to efficiently seek satisfactory sequence of all time points. Its superiority is validated by two real-world cases.