Operations Research Transactions ›› 2025, Vol. 29 ›› Issue (4): 141-158.doi: 10.15960/j.cnki.issn.1007-6093.2025.04.012

• Research Article • Previous Articles     Next Articles

A hybrid distribution recursion and branch and bound algorithm for Petroluem refinery optimization problem

Xin SUN1,2, Dongdong GE3,*(), Desheng FU4, Zhiwei WEI1,2, Fenglian DONG1,2, Shichang PAN3   

  1. 1. PetroChina Planning and Engineering Institute, Beijing 100086, China
    2. Laboratory of Oil Gas Business Chain Optimization, China National Petroleum Corporation, Beijing 100086, China
    3. Antai College of Economics & Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200030, China
    4. Production and Operation Management Department, China National Petroleum Corporation, Beijing 100007, China
  • Received:2023-11-08 Online:2025-12-15 Published:2025-12-11
  • Contact: Dongdong GE E-mail:ddge@sjtu.edu.cn

Abstract:

The optimization of refinery operations is a critical issue within the crude oil supply chain, garnering extensive research and application interest across both academic and industrial sectors. Typically, refinery optimization problems are modeled as Mixed Integer Non-Linear Programming (MINLP) problems. The complexity of these problems arises from the vast diversity of crude oil types and their derivative products, coupled with intricate processing procedures. Moreover, specific processing steps involve changes in material properties and rules, introducing non-convex, nonlinear, and integer constraints, which increase the solution-finding difficulty. Currently, academic research primarily focuses on modeling and solving small-scale issues or subsystems of operational processes. Commercial solvers like BARON and DICOPT in GAMS are commonly employed for such tasks. This paper introduces a Hybrid Distribution Recursion and Branch and Bound algorithm (Hybrid-DRBB) for solving MINLP in refinery optimization. This method relaxes and solves nonlinear and integer constraints separately, thereby obtaining near-optimal solutions for the original problem. Through numerical experiments utilizing real-world, large-scale data scenarios, we demonstrate the efficiency of our method in comparison to traditional commercial solvers, highlighting its reduced computational cost and improved solving approach.

Key words: refinery optimization, MINLP, distribution recursion algorithm, branch and bound algorithm

CLC Number: