Fuel Supply Chain


Description:
With a sharp increase in transportation demand, the construction of fuel supply chains has been thriving all over the world. However, management and operation of fuel supply chain is a complex problem since it involves inventory management, batch sequences order, transportation mode selection, hydraulic and thermodynamic risks analysis, etc. Up to now, there have been extensive studies aiming at different supply chain structures, operating modes and optimization targets during the last decades. Both modeling methods and solving methods have been developed and maturated gradually. However, the fuel supply chains are a continuous and dynamic process with plenty of uncertainties. The limitation of nonpolynomial solving time caused by these factors is the main impediment for the practicability of the traditional mathematical programming method. With the blooming development of machine learning and data mining technologies, the data-driven method makes it possible to solve complex optimization issue with a lower time cost. Nevertheless, the dilemma between optimality and efficiency is still existing. Although in some situations, finding out the global optimal solution is not so much necessary on account of the low-cost performance, in some other situations, a more optimal solution could save a great deal of energy consumption and operation cost. In these cases, how to get a more optimal solution under the constraint of computation time limitation is the ultimate goal for optimization issues of the fuel supply chain system.

Moreover, along with the integration of fuel supply chains in different regions, the supply chain systems to be scheduled are more complicated than before, making it challenging for traditional methods to find a feasible solution in reasonable time. Therefore, this mini-symposium aims at encouraging researchers to develop highly-efficient methods for the management optimization of large-scale fuel supply chain systems. We invite investigators to contribute to this mini-symposium with original research articles addressing the recent advances and challenges in mathematical modeling and algorithm. We are looking for papers with a focus on interdisciplinary optimization methods for intelligently and efficiently solving certain fuel supply chain system related issues. The papers of the special issue are aimed at bringing the attention of the academic and industrial community on how emerging methodological techniques can support the planning, design, scheduling, and control of the fuel supply chain system.

Keywords:
  • Fuel supply chain system analysis
  • Pipeline scheduling optimization
  • Batch sequence and size
  • Pump scheduling optimization
  • Inventory management
  • Real-time scheduling
  • System reliability analysis
  • Highly-efficient method for large-scale issues
  • Interdisciplinary optimization method

Chair:
Yongtu Liang, PhD, Professor, China University of Petroleum (Beijing), China.
Prof. Liang graduated from China University of Petroleum (East China) with a bachelor's degree in oil production engineering in 1995, and obtained a master's degree and doctor's degree of engineering in the major of oil and gas storage and transportation engineering in China University of Petroleum (Beijing) in 2001 and 2009. He was a visiting scholar at Robert Gordon University from the year 2005 to 2006 in the United Kingdom. Since 2001 he joined China University of Petroleum (Beijing) and has been awarded SPE outstanding contribution award, SPE innovative teaching award and other awards as well as honorary titles. Currently, he is the secretary-general of the executive committee of China Petroleum Engineering Design Competition. So far, Prof. Liang has chaired 4 projects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, six items funded by the province department level topic, and several other scientific research projects. He has published more than 100 papers as the first author or corresponding author in topic academic journals such as Energy, Applied Energy, Journal of Hazardous Materials, International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, Applied Thermal Engineering, etc.

Co-Chairs:
Pedro Castro, Ph.D, Associate Researcher, University of Lisbon, Portugal.
Dr. Pedro Castro is an Associate Researcher of CMAFCIO, a research unit of the University of Lisbon, since 2014. He graduated (1997) in Chemical Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, as best student of his class and achieved his PhD in December 2001 from the same University. Between 2004 and 2013, he spent a total of 18 months in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University working in collaboration with Dean University Professor of Chemical Engineering, Ignacio Grossmann. A major output has been the Cyber-Infrastructure site: www.minlp.org. His research interests are at the interface between Chemical, Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, known as Process Systems Engineering (PSE). He has authored more than 70 ISI-indexed journal articles, receiving over 2000 citations for an h-index of 27, and has been invited to give lectures and short courses worldwide. Most of his research has focused on the solution of real-life industrial problems from a variety of sectors: pulp and paper, chemicals, cement, steel, plastics, petroleum and aeronautics. He is better known for his mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) models and algorithms for process scheduling and global optimization of non-convex problems with bilinear terms.

Prof Jiří Jaromír KLEMEŠ, Brno University of Technology, Brno, Czech Republic.
Head of "Sustainable Process Integration Laboratory-SPIL", Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic. Previously worked at UMIST, The University of Manchester and the University of Edinburgh, UK. Founder and a long-term Head of the Centre for Process Integration and Intensification – CPI2, University of Pannonia, Hungary. Awarded by the EC with Marie Curie Chair of Excellence (EXC). Track record of managing and coordinating 93 major EC, NATO and UK Know-How projects. Research funding attracted over 31 M€.
Co-Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Cleaner Production and Chemical Engineering Transactions, Subject Editor of Energy and Emeritus Executive Editor of Applied Thermal Engineering. The founder and President for 22 y of PRES (Process Integration for Energy Saving and Pollution Reduction) conferences. Seven years Chairperson of CAPE Working Party of EFCE (European Federation of Chemical Engineering). He has been awarded by the Web of Science and Publons a Highly Cited Researcher, Top Peer Reviewer and Top Handling Editor. He authored and co-authored more than 500 papers.
Has reviewed for 106 scientific journals and serviced for 25 Editorial boards. Distinguished Invited Lecturer at 51 universities world-wide. Several times Distinguished Visiting Professor. Awarded with "Honorary Membership of Czech Society of Chemical Engineering", "European Federation of Chemical Engineering (EFCE) Life-Time Achievements Award" and "Pro Universitaire Pannonica" Gold Medal.

Yi Wang, PhD, Associate Professor, China University of Petroleum (Beijing), China.
Yi Wang obtained his doctoral degree from China University of Petroleum-Beijing in 2011 and now is an Associate Professor in China University of Petroleum-Beijing. He has two-year research experience in USA as visiting scholar and one-year research experience in Saudi Arabia as post-doctoral fellow. He directed 4 research projects funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and 2 research projects funded by China University of Petroleum-Beijing. As one of the main contributors, he anticipated other 10 research projects funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China, Ministry of Education of China, China National Petroleum Corporation and NSF of USA. He published 85 articles including 43 SCI articles, 11 EI articles and 31 conference papers. He obtained “Excellent PhD Disertation” award of China University of Petroleum-Beijing and 3 national research awards partially supported by his research outcomes. He obtained "Excellent PhD Disertation" award of China University of Petroleum-Beijing and 4 province-level research awards. He organized 1 international minisymposium and chaired 5 sessions in international conferences. Prof. Wang also obtained "Chen Xue-Jun Excellent Research Paper Award for Young Scholar”. He has been a lead guest editor/guest editor for international SCI journals: Geofluids, Advances in Mechanical Engineering, for 6 years.

Haoran Zhang, PhD, University of Tokyo, Japan.
Haoran Zhang received the Ph.D. degree in oil-gas storage and transportation engineering in 2018 from China University of Petroleum-Beijing (CUPB), Beijing, China. Now, he is working at the Center for Spatial Information Science, the University of Tokyo toward postdoc in intelligent systems development. His current research interests include system optimization and data mining. As the first author, he has published 20 SCI papers, one EI paper, and three conference papers in many top international journals and conferences, such as Energy, Applied Energy, Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics, etc.