Cycle Scheduling of Ethylene Cracking Furnace System with Inventory Constraints

The ethylene cracking furnace system produces ethylene and other chemical products through cracking petroleum hydrocarbons such as naphtha. Its scheduling problem involves multiple feeds, tanks and furnaces. The performance of cracking furnace is time-variating, which bring challenges to the optimal scheduling. Previous studies have developed the mixed integer nonlinear programming scheduling models, by simplifying the actual process. This paper develops a scheduling model with inventory constraints to prevent the insufficient inventory or excessive inventory in the real-world production process. The proposed model is compared with the existing models without inventory constraint to verify the effectiveness.