scholarly journals Optimal Production Planning and Pollution Control in Petroleum Refineries Using Mathematical Programming and Dispersion Models

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (14) ◽  
pp. 3771
Author(s):  
Amani Alnahdi ◽  
Ali Elkamel ◽  
Munawar A. Shaik ◽  
Saad A. Al-Sobhi ◽  
Fatih S. Erenay

Oil refineries, producing a large variety of products, are considered as one of the main sources of air contaminants such as sulfur oxides (SOx), hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides (NOx), and carbon dioxide (CO2), which are primarily caused by fuel combustion. Gases emanated from the combustion of fuel in an oil refinery need to be reduced, as it poses an environmental hazard. Several strategies can be applied in order to mitigate emissions and meet environmental regulations. This study proposes a mathematical programming model to derive the optimal pollution control strategies for an oil refinery, considering various reduction options for multiple pollutants. The objective of this study is to help decision makers select the most economic pollution control strategy, while satisfying given emission reduction targets. The proposed model is tested on an industrial scale oil refinery sited in North Toronto, Ontario, Canada considering emissions of NOx, SOx, and CO2. In this analysis, the dispersion of these air pollutants is captured using a screening model (SCREEN3) and a non-steady state CALPUFF model based on topographical and meteorological conditions. This way, the impacts of geographic location on the concentration of pollutant emissions were examined in a realistic way. The numerical experiments showed that the optimal production and pollution control plans derived from the proposed optimization model can reduce NOx, SOx, and CO2 emission by up to 60% in exchange of up to 10.7% increase in cost. The results from the dispersion models verified that these optimal production and pollution control plans may achieve a significant reduction in pollutant emission in a large geographic area around the refinery site.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 891-900
Author(s):  
Siping Ji ◽  
Haiyun Chen ◽  
Yongming Chuan ◽  
Libin Gao ◽  
Chenhui Liu ◽  
...  

Abstract Serious environmental problems are exacerbated with economic growth. Pollution control and emission reduction are now challenged, and we have to pay real attention. Pollutant discharge fee (PDF), one of the enforced levy regulations on pollutant discharge in China, was introduced in a new perspective as a direct economic representation of multi-pollutant emission. The DPSIR framework and regression model were constructed to analyze the co-control process of pollutant emission based on the provincial data from 2000 to 2012. The results showed that PDF had a significant and positive relationship with CO2 emission in China during 2000–2012. A special contradiction was found that CO2 emission and PDF increased greatly, verified with empirical analysis, while the pollutant emission reduction target in the 11th and 12th Five-Year Plan (FYP) was achieved for the corresponding periods, which indicated that emission co-control is still unrealized in China. Conversely, the single indicator control of pollutant emission generated by opportunistic behavior of the Chinese government failed to bring real environmental improvement. In addition, PDF can be seen as a mirror for the Environment Tax (ET) to achieve authentic emission reduction and pollution control, even for sustainable development in China.


2019 ◽  
Vol 177 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-171
Author(s):  
Katarzyna BEBKIEWICZ ◽  
Zdzisław CHŁOPEK ◽  
Jakub LASOCKI ◽  
Krystian SZCZEPAŃSKI ◽  
Magdalena ZIMAKOWSKA-LASKOWSKA

Within the Institute of Environmental Protection – National Research Institute the Central Emission Database is being established. The Database will cover the most important emission sectors from anthropogenic activities, including usage of motor vehicles. The intensity of emissions of individual pollutants is the input data to air pollution dispersion models. Based on calculations performed by the air pollution dispersion models concentration of pollutants dispersed in atmospheric air (pollution immission) is provided. The annual average immision for a selected place in Poland is a measure of the threat to environment. In order to determine the intensity of pollutant emissions from motor vehicles it is necessary to recognize the intensity of vehicle motion and the volume of emission of pollutants depending on the type of vehicle motion. The task presented in this article is to determine the characteristics of pollutant emissions from motor vehicles depending on the type of their motion. The mean value of vehicle speeds was used to characterize the type of vehicle motion. The emission of pollutants from vehicles is therefore characterized by the dependence of road emissions of pollutants on the average speed of vehicles. The characteristics were determined for cumulated categories of motor vehicles: passenger cars, light commercial vehicles as well as heavy duty trucks and buses. The results of the inventory of pollutant emissions from motor vehicles in Poland in 2016 were used to determine the characteristics of pollutant emissions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 465
Author(s):  
Mengyuan Sun ◽  
Yong Tian ◽  
Yao Zhang ◽  
Muhammad Nadeem ◽  
Can Xu

Under the background of economic globalization, the air transport industry developed rapidly. It turns out that the city-to-city network has not been able to adapt well to the development of the society, and the hub-and-spoke network came into being. The hub-and-spoke network demonstrates the advantages of reducing the operating costs of airlines to keep a competitive advantage, and by maintaining the interests of airlines in the rapidly developing context. However, during the operation of aircrafts, they consume fuel and spew a great deal of harmful pollutants into the air, which has an adverse impact on the living environment. This paper explores the impact and external costs associated with hub-and-spoke network in air transport from an environmental perspective. With some mathematical models, we construct a hub-and-spoke network and take a quantitative study on the environmental impact of air transport. For calculating pollutant emissions, meteorological conditions were considered to revise the pollutant emission factors of the Engine Emissions Data Base (EEDB) published by International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The environmental external costs measurement model is employed to calculate the externality of toxic gas and greenhouse gas (GHG). In order to make the study more convincing, two alternative networks are computed: hub-and-spoke network and city-to-city network. It is found that the hub-and-spoke network is associated with poorer environmental impact and environmental external costs because of the different network characteristics and the scale of the fleets. Therefore, under the general trend of green aviation, the environmental impact and environmental external costs associated with hub-and-spoke network in air transport provides a certain reference for airlines’ strategic decision-making.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 590
Author(s):  
Aiban Abdulhakim Saeed Ghaleb ◽  
Shamsul Rahman Mohamed Kutty ◽  
Gasim Hayder Ahmed Salih ◽  
Ahmad Hussaini Jagaba ◽  
Azmatullah Noor ◽  
...  

Man-made organic waste leads to the rapid proliferation of pollution around the globe. Effective bio-waste management can help to reduce the adverse effects of organic waste while contributing to the circular economy at the same time. The toxic oily-biological sludge generated from oil refineries’ wastewater treatment plants is a potential source for biogas energy recovery via anaerobic digestion. However, the oily-biological sludge’s carbon/nitrogen (C/N) ratio is lower than the ideal 20–30 ratio required by anaerobic digestion technology for biogas production. Sugarcane bagasse can be digested as a high C/N co-substrate while the oily-biological sludge acts as a substrate and inoculum to improve biogas production. In this study, the best C/N with co-substrate volatile solids (VS)/inoculum VS ratios for the co-digestion process of mixtures were determined empirically through batch experiments at temperatures of 35–37 °C, pH (6–8) and 60 rpm mixing. The raw materials were pre-treated mechanically and thermo-chemically to further enhance the digestibility. The best condition for the sugarcane bagasse delignification process was 1% (w/v) sodium hydroxide, 1:10 solid-liquid ratio, at 100 °C, and 150 rpm for 1 h. The results from a 33-day batch anaerobic digestion experiment indicate that the production of biogas and methane yield were concurrent with the increasing C/N and co-substrate VS/inoculum VS ratios. The total biogas yields from C/N 20.0 with co-substrate VS/inoculum VS 0.06 and C/N 30.0 with co-substrate VS/inoculum VS 0.18 ratios were 2777.0 and 9268.0 mL, respectively, including a methane yield of 980.0 and 3009.3 mL, respectively. The biogas and methane yield from C/N 30.0 were higher than the biogas and methane yields from C/N 20.0 by 70.04 and 67.44%, respectively. The highest biogas and methane yields corresponded with the highest C/N with co-substrate VS/inoculum VS ratios (30.0 and 0.18), being 200.6 mL/g VSremoved and 65.1 mL CH4/g VSremoved, respectively.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 2413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chu-Lun Hsieh ◽  
Wen-Hsien Tsai ◽  
Yao-Chung Chang

Using mathematical programming with activity-based costing (ABC) and based on the theory of constraints (TOC), this study proposed a green production model for the traditional paper industry to achieve the purpose of energy saving and carbon emission reduction. The mathematical programming model presented in this paper considers (1) revenue of main products and byproducts, (2) unit-level, batch-level, and product-level activity costs in ABC, (3) labor cost with overtime available, (4) machine cost with capacity expansion, (5) saved electric power and steam costs by using the coal as the main fuel in conjunction with Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF). This model also considers the constraint of the quantity of carbon equivalent of various gases that are allowed to be emitted from the mill paper-making process to conform to the environmental protection policy. A numerical example is used to demonstrate how to apply the model presented in this paper. In addition, sensitivity analysis on the key parameters of the model are used to provide further insights for this research.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hai Shen ◽  
Lingyu Hu ◽  
Kin Keung Lai

Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method has been extended in previous literature to consider the situation with interval input data. However, the weights associated with criteria are still subjectively assigned by decision makers. This paper develops a mathematical programming model to determine objective weights for the implementation of interval extension of TOPSIS. Our method not only takes into account the optimization of interval-valued Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) problems, but also determines the weights only based upon the data set itself. An illustrative example is performed to compare our results with that of existing literature.


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