Models and Heuristics for the Flow-Refuelling Location Problem

Purpose of this paper: Firstly, the paper serves as an overview of the emerging field of flow-refuelling location, which mainly occurs in the context of locating alternative-fuel (hydrogen, electric, liquefied natural gas and hybrid) vehicle refuelling stations. We aim to review and explain models and solution approaches, with a particular focus on mathematical programming formulations. Secondly, we propose a new heuristic for this problem and investigate its performance.

Findings: Our experimental results show that the proposed heuristic can find optimal solutions in a reasonable amount of time, outperforming other heuristics from the literature.

Research limitations: This being the first paper applying a restricted-subproblem approach to this problem it is necessarily limited in scope. Applying a traditional Kernel Search method would be an interesting next step. The proposed heuristic should also be extended to cover for more than just one FRLM model: certainly the capacitated FRLM, the FRLM with deviation, the fixed-charge FRLM and the multi-period FRLM should be investigated.

at governmental or international level on strategic decisions relating to the establishment or development of alternative-fuel refuelling station networks.