American J. of Engineering and Applied Sciences 3 (1): 138-143, 2010
ISSN 1941-7020
© 2010 Science Publications
Corresponding Author: Razman Mat Tahar, Faculty of technology Management, University Malaysia Pahang, Kuantan,
Malaysia
138
A Novel Transporting System Model for Oil Refinery
Razman Mat Tahar and Waleed K. Abduljabbar
Faculty of technology Management, University Malaysia Pahang, Kuantan, Malaysia
Abstract: Problem statement: Oil refineries are widely used to store various liquids and gases.
Petroleum products are in high demand. Oil companies have abundant resources of petroleum products
in pipelines and storage tanks. Approach: Included are storage tanks at retail gasoline station, home
heating oil tanks, lubricant storage at automotive service facilities, propane tanks in all sorts of
application, and oil company terminals across the world. The aim of this study is to present a model by
which a decision maker should be able to choose the optimal number of tanks, tank size and truck
arrival rate to maximize average total profit per week for an oil terminal operation. Results: In this
study, oil terminal modeled by using a discrete event simulation program Arena for AL-Dura refinery,
Baghdad, Iraq. Multifactor variance analysis is used to determine different levels of the three factors
and their interactions significantly affect the terminal profit including the optimal number of tanks, size
of tanks and trucks of the arrival rate to maximize total revenue on average per week.
Conclusion/Recommendations: The result showed minimum cost of oil at the terminal and tanker
truck fill rates and price and income structure, also predict with 90% confidence levels, a number of
factors, which gives highest average total income per week
Key words: Refinery operations, petroleum, transportation, supply chain policies
INTRODUCTION
Oil terminals are widely used to store various
liquids and gases such as chemicals, crude oil and
natural gas. Petroleum products are in high demand for
heating, manufacturing, vehicle fuel, lubricants and
more. Comprehensive overview of the work associated
with the optimization in oil refinery chain interestingly,
a similar trend is observed for refinery modeling the
supply chain. Most work on refineries food chain
modeling reported in the literature only one address of
the chain, such as crude logistics using discrete event
simulation and optimal control (Neiro and Pinto, 2004;
Reddy et al., 2004).
As recent research efforts advance in several
converging areas of science and technology, how the
orientation of management science in mobile is that of
joint problem solving (Hughes, 1971). He sets up a
network model to determine where to locate the
terminals with respect to customer distribution sites.
The efficient ways of loading and unloading into and
out of storage tanks at oil terminals (Christofides et al.,
1980). The transportation costs involved in loading and
unloading these storage tanks are not investigated,
additionally the article does not address the terminal
profits. Simulation-based short-term scheduling of
crude oil from port to refinery tanks and distillation
unit, agent-based crude procurement (Cheng and Duran,
2004; Chryssolouris et al., 2005; Julka et al., 2002).
External the refinery environment (Banks et al., 2002),
Supply Chain Management (SCM) simulation studies at
IBM and Virtual Logistics and talk about issues related
to strategic and operational SCM, distributed SCM
simulation and commercial packages for SCM
simulation (Kleijnen, 2005). Make a distinction four
types of simulation-spreadsheet simulation, system
dynamics, discrete-event simulation and business
games and give a literature review of the application of
each type in SCM (Jung et al., 2004). Propose a
simulation-based optimization computational
framework for determining safety stock levels for
planning and scheduling applications. They combine
deterministic planning and scheduling models for
optimization and a discrete-event simulation model.
Their job is focused on planning and scheduling
(Suresh et al., 2008). Developed Integrated Refinery In
Silico (IRIS), an integrated model of all the entities in
the refinery supply chain, so as to enable integrated and
matched decision making.
In this study, Oil refineries model have abundant
resources of petroleum products in pipelines and
storage tanks. Included are storage tanks at retail
gasoline station, home heating oil tanks, lubricant
storage at automotive service facilities, propane tanks in