An integrated optimization and simulation model for refinery planning including external loads and product evaluation

Abstract Because of its potential benefits, petroleum refineries are increasingly concerned about their planning operations. Although some refinery models for production planning were proposed, they are quite limited in their usefulness. This study describes an integrated approach involving nonlinear optimization and simulation of refinery units in order to obtain a production planning for a given refinery that maximizes profit. The problem is modeled through the LINGO 16.0 software interface and is solved using LINGO’s Global Solver on an Intel i5-2410M processor (8 GB RAM). A case study pe...