A Strategy for the Integration of Production Planning and Scheduling in Refineries under Uncertainty

A strategy for the integration of production planning and scheduling in refineries is proposed. This strategy relies on rolling horizon strategy and a two-level decomposition strategy. This strategy involves an upper level multiperiod mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model and a lower level simulation system, which is extended from our previous framework for short-term scheduling problems [Luo, C.P, Rong G., "Hierarchical approach for short-term scheduling in refineries", Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., 46, 3656-3668 (2007)]. The main purpose of this extended framework is to reduce the number of variables and the size of the optimization model and, to quickly find the optimal solution for the integrated planning/scheduling problem in refineries. Uncertainties are also considered in this article. An integrated robust optimization approach is introduced to cope with uncertain parameters with both continuous and discrete probability distribution.