Greedy Approach For Solving Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem Of LNG Distribution To Power Plants

Nowadays, LNG industry in Indonesia grows rapidly. It is related to the increasing of electricity demand in Indonesia, in particular, Papua. Since LNG is utilized as fuel of gas turbine power plants. LNG is transported from depot to destinations in order to accomplish the demands at each destination. Furthermore, deciding the number of ships and their routes for transporting LNG to every demand location efficiently is a crucial part to reduce the total operational cost in LNG industries. Hence, the consideration of LNG transportation becomes necessary. The consideration for deciding the number of ships and their routes is not only related to transportation cost but also inventory cost. In addition, the government plan to build some gas turbine power plants in Papua leads to availability of thirteen regasification terminals at there. In response to this problem, this research provided a case study in Papua and proposed a model to determine the number of ships and the optimum ship route to transport LNG from an LNG production terminal to thirteen regasification terminals by considering both transportation cost and inventory cost. The problem in this research is finding and assigning appropriate route and ship, so the demands can be fulfilled. Moreover, distance, power plants demands, transportation cost, and inventory cost were further analyzed by using the greedy approach in order to determine the optimum route for this case. In addition, the ship sizes were limited to four alternatives, which were 2500 m3, 7500 m3, 10000 m3, and 23000 m3. Thus, this problem considered as a capacitated vehicle routing problem. The result recommended the utilization of smaller size vessels with more frequent shipments compared to the earlier research on the same case study. There are seven ships assigned to some particular routes. They are one ship with capacity 2500 m3, four ships with capacity 7500 m3, and two ships with capacity 23000 m3. Each ship is assigned for particular route. Moreover, the result was proven to perform better under uncertain weather in Papua since the ship draft of the smaller vessel will be more adaptable for changing water depth due to changing tides at particular ports