A solution approach for deriving alternative fuel station infrastructure requirements

Abstract

When an alternative fuel is introduced, the infrastructure through which that fuel is made available to the market is often underdeveloped. Transportation service providers relying on such infrastructures are unlikely to adopt alternative fuel vehicles as it may impose long detours for refueling. In this paper, we design and apply a new solution approach to derive minimum infrastructure requirements, in terms of the number of alternative fuel stations. The effectiveness of our approach is demonstrated by applying it to the case of introducing liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a transportation fuel in The Netherlands. From this case, we learn that, depending on the driving range of the LNG trucks and the size of area on which those trucks operate, a minimum of 5-12 LNG fuel stations is necessary to render LNG trucks economically and environmentally beneficial.

Strategic and operational decision-making in expanding supply chains for LNG as a fuel

“…LNG is natural gas that is converted to a liquid state by cooling it down to approximately −162 • C. In this liquid state, it takes up much less volume compared to a (compressed) gaseous state, which makes LNG particularly suitable as a fuel for long-haul transportation. Using LNG as a transportation fuel is a recent development, and the supply chain through which the fuel is made available to its customers is still noticeably in development [35,26].…”

An inventory control policy for liquefied natural gas as a transportation fuel

“…The adoption of LNG as a fuel in road and maritime transportation is strongly dependent on its competitiveness compared to conventional fuels in terms of cost, availability and fuel efficiency [9,20,25] . Therefore, a good design and efficient management of the LNG supply chain is paramount.…”

“…Truck and ship operators using LNG as a fuel rely on the small-scale LNG sup-ply chain, comprised of refueling stations and intermediary storage facilities. Research aimed at optimizing the small-scale LNG supply chain is scarce [10,16,20] .…”

Coordinating technician allocation and maintenance routing for offshore wind farms

“…By a full-grid Monte-Carlo simulation on parameters describing the transportation network, they provided insights when it is beneficial for individual logistics carriers to cooperate. A similar simulation approach is taken by Post et al (2017), incorporating routing heuristics to provide an in-depth analysis of an LNG transportation network.…”