Bayer digestion maintenance optimisation with lazy constraints and Benders decomposition

This paper describes a maintenance scheduling model for digester banks. Digester banks are network-connected assets that lie on the critical path of the Bayer process, a chemical refinement process that converts bauxite ore into alumina. The banks require different maintenance activities at differen...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAnnals of operations research Vol. 338; no. 1; pp. 269 - 302
Main Authors Spiers, Sandy, Bui, Hoa T., Loxton, Ryan, Mansour, Moussa Reda, Hollins, Kylie, Francis, Richard, Martindale, Christopher, Pimpale, Yogesh
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Springer US 01.07.2024
Springer
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Algorithms
Bank failures
Bauxite
Bayer process
Benders decomposition
Business and Management
Combinatorics
Constraints
Cost control
Critical path
Decomposition
Decomposition (Mathematics)
Digesters
Fleet management
Industrial equipment
Integer programming
Liquor
Maintenance and repair
Maintenance management
Mathematical optimization
Mixed integer
Operations research
Operations Research/Decision Theory
Original Research
Preventive maintenance
Production scheduling
Refineries
Resource scheduling
Schedules
Scheduling
Theory of Computation
Australia
Bayer digestion
Lazy constraints
Maintenance scheduling
Benders decomposition
Network assets
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Summary:This paper describes a maintenance scheduling model for digester banks. Digester banks are network-connected assets that lie on the critical path of the Bayer process, a chemical refinement process that converts bauxite ore into alumina. The banks require different maintenance activities at different due times. Furthermore, the maintenance schedule is subject to production-related constraints and resource limitations. Given the complexity of scheduling maintenance for large fleets of digester banks, a continuous-time, mixed-integer linear program is formulated to find the cost-minimising maintenance schedule that satisfies all required constraints. A solution approach that employs lazy constraints and Benders decomposition is proposed to solve the model. Unlike generic implementations of Benders decomposition, we show that the subproblems can be solved explicitly using a specialist algorithm. We solve the scheduling model for realistic scenarios involving two Bayer refineries based in Western Australia.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
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ISSN:0254-5330
1572-9338
DOI:10.1007/s10479-023-05561-6