The economic and efficient operation of multi-product pipelines is crucially determined by preparing and implementing scheduling plans in operating units. Considering the multi-product pipeline is a complicated closed hydraulic system, the flowrate constraints alone cannot guarantee the optimization for overall pipeline operation. At present, domestic and foreign scholars are undertaking a lot of research into scheduling optimization for multi-product pipelines while mostly neglecting hydraulic constraints. In this paper, an objective function is established to minimize the total volume deviation in scheduling periods, comprehensively considering the injection, delivery, pump stations, batch migration and hydraulic constraints. A continuous-time mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model is put forward and solved by decomposing the model into integer programming (IP) and mixed integer linear programming (MILP) issues. Moreover, the proposed optimization model is put into practice for a real-world multi-product pipeline and works out the detailed optimal scheduling plan and pumping plan accordingly. Results show that the scheduling period is 179.7 hours and the calculation time is 180.32 seconds. The scheduling plan can be compliant with field requirements, which indicates the efficiency and reliability of the model.
