CRUDEOIL is a computer interface designed to solve the problem of inventory management of a refinery that imports several types of crude oil which are delivered by different vessels. It is formulated as a multiperiod MILP model according to H. Lee, J. Pinto, I.E. Grossmann and S.Park (1995).

Given the configuration of the multistage system, arrival times of vessels, equipment capacity limitations and key component concentration ranges, CRUDEOIL optimizes the problem to determine optimal operation of crudeoil unloading, its transfer from storage tanks to charging tanks,and the charging schedule for each crude oil distillation unit to minimize operating cost.

This interface is written in language C and it is implemented on Windows NT, IBM RS6000, HP and SUN(SunOS and Solaris) workstations. The way this interface works is through the use of different menus, it is flexible and easy to use. Given the data of the problem, CRUDEOIL creates a new GAMS file containing the model equations and optimizes the problem using the OSL or CPLEX as a MIP solver.

CRUDEOIL also plots the optimal operation schedule obtained. In this part, it is possible to plot vessel unloading schedule, operation of storage and charging tanks, crude distillation unit (CDU) charging schedule, and key component concentrations in storage and charging tanks.

CRUDEOIL has been developed by Arzu Türkay under the supervision of I.E. Grossmann .

References for CRUDEOIL:

Lee, H.; Pinto, J.M.; Grossmann, I.E. & Park, S., MILP model for Refinery Short Term Scheduling of Crude Oil Unloading with Inventory Management, Industrial&Engineering Chemistry Research, vol. 35(5), p.1630 (1996).

Türkay, Arzu, Guidelines for CRUDEOIL Interface, Carnegie Mellon University,Engineering Design Research Center, Pittsburgh, PA.