Energy policy considerations in the design of an alternative-fuel refueling infrastructure to reduce GHG emissions on a transportation network

Journal of Advanced Transportation

2020

Self Cite

With the development of alternative fuel (AF) vehicle technologies, studies on finding the potential location of AF refueling stations in transportation networks have received considerable attention. Due to the strong limited driving range, AF vehicles for long-distance intercity trips may require multiple refueling stops at different locations on the way to their destination, which makes the AF refueling station location problem more challenging. In this paper, we consider that AF vehicles requiring multiple refueling stops at different locations during their long-distance intercity trips are capable of making detours from their preplanned paths and selecting return paths that may be different from original paths for their round trips whenever AF refueling stations are not available along the preplanned paths. These options mostly need to be considered when an AF refueling infrastructure is not fully developed on a highway system. To this end, we first propose an algorithm to generate alternative paths that may provide the multiple AF refueling stops between all origin/destination (OD) vertices. Then, a new mixed-integer programming model is proposed to locate AF refueling stations within a preselected set of candidate sites on a directed transportation network by maximizing the coverage of traffic flows along multiple paths. We first test our mathematical model with the proposed algorithm on a classical 25-vertex network with 25 candidate sites through various scenarios that consider a different number of paths for each OD pair, deviation factors, and limited driving ranges of vehicles. Then, we apply our proposed model to locate liquefied natural gas refueling stations in the state of Pennsylvania considering the construction budget. Our results show that the number of alternative paths and deviation distance available significantly affect the coverage of traffic flows at the stations as well as computational time.

Section: Effect Of the Maximum Deviation Distancementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

An Alternative Fuel Refueling Station Location Model considering Detour Traffic Flows on a Highway Road System

Hwang

Kweon

Journal of Advanced Transportation

2020

Self Cite

“…For example, it takes $1.8 million to $4.7 million to construct a natural gas refueling station on the Pennsylvania Journal of Advanced Transportation 3 Turnpike without including the land value [10]. Due to the financial risk, it is unusual to build multiple AF refueling stations on the same road network simultaneously.…”

Section: Setting Up An Af Refueling Station On Toll Roadsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recently, refueling station location models have been extended to more general forms considering specific applications, including a multiperiod planning formulation for the allocation of electric charging stations over time [25]; a twostage stochastic station location model, where the first stage locates permanent stations and the second locates portable stations [26]; a new model that considers multiple deviation paths between each of the O/D pairs when searching for station locations [27]; novel station location formulations for symmetric transportation networks that consider both single-and dual-access candidate sites [28,29]; a biobjective model to estimate the greenhouse gases emissions reduction as a function of the refueling infrastructure budget [10]; and models that consider capacitated stations and traffic deviations over multiple time periods [30], and traffic deviation considering route choice and demand uncertainty [31], under Journal of Advanced Transportation 5 the assumption that vehicles only require one refueling stop for intracity trips.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Continuous Deviation-Flow Location Problem for an Alternative-Fuel Refueling Station on a Tree-Like Transportation Network

Kweon

Hwang

Journal of Advanced Transportation

2017

Self Cite

Due to the increasing popularity of alternative-fuel (AF) vehicles in the last two decades, several models and solution techniques have been recently published in the literature to solve AF refueling station location problems. These problems can be classified depending on the set of candidate sites: when a (finite) set of candidate sites is predetermined, the problem is called discrete; when stations can be located anywhere along the network, the problem is called continuous. Most researchers have focused on the discrete version of the problem, but solutions to the discrete version are suboptimal to its continuous counterpart. This study addresses the continuous version of the problem for an AF refueling station on a tree-type transportation network when a portion of drivers are willing to deviate from their preplanned simple paths to receive refueling service. A polynomial time solution approach is proposed to solve the problem. We first present a new algorithm that identifies all possible deviation options for each travel path. Then, an efficient algorithm is used to determine the set of optimal locations for the refueling station that maximizes the total traffic flow covered. A numerical example is solved to illustrate the proposed solution approach.

An edge scanning method for the continuous deviation‐flow refueling station location problem on a general network

Abbaas

2021

Networks

Self Cite

This study addresses the continuous deviation-flow refueling station location problem on a general network. Instead of having a finite number of candidate locations, we consider any point in the network as a candidate location. In addition, vehicles are allowed to deviate from their prescribed (shortest) paths to refuel. At the beginning, we focus on the location of a single refueling facility, which is a relevant problem in the initial stages of development of a refueling infrastructure for alternative fuels in a transportation network. The objective is to maximize the traffic flow covered (in roundtrips per time unit). We propose an exact algorithm that determines the endpoints of all refueling segments on each edge of the network that cover the corresponding origin-destination flows. Then, the set with the best endpoints is shown to be optimal and can be used to determine the entire set of optimal locations. Network reduction rules and a network decomposition procedure are also discussed to reduce the size of the problem and improve the computational efficiency. Later, the entire set of endpoints is used in a set covering model to locate multiple refueling stations under the assumption that every vehicle only needs to refuel once on each way of the round trip. Moreover, we limit the allowed refueling deviation distance from the shortest path. Finally, a numerical example is provided to illustrate the proposed methodology.