Mixture Optimization of Differents Types of Alcohol for Export

Abstract

Because of the countless economical and partner-environmental problems caused by the excess of gasoline consumption and other pollutants and nonrenewables fuels, the exported product (ethanol) was taken as a practical solution for such problem; the objective is to use it as a renewable fuel, mixed with the gasoline for automobiles. In this paper, a Non Linear Programming (NLP) model is developed to establish a volumetric quantity of ethanol produced by every Brazilian distillery to attend the quality specification and the annual required demand by each importer. The model aims the minimization of the global cost of the annual production, considering the specifications of the quality pattern demanded by each importer. To reach the properties of the final blend, it was necessary to convert some properties of the product produced from each distillery into volumetric basis and consider it a case of study, to evaluate the application and the great global results from the program. The Conopt solver, available in GAMS, was used to solve this problem.