Formulation and Solution Algorithm of Flow-Refueling Location Problem for bi-fuel Vehicles to Minimize GHG Emissions

Because of the destructive effects of greenhouse gas emitted by fossil fuels, moving to alternative fuels is an unavoidable. Alternative fuels play a very important role in the transition to a sustainable and clean the transportation sector. The adoption of alternative fuel vehicle fleets is not easy and, particularly at the beginning of the transition period, the lack of infrastructure for producing, distributing and delivering the alternative fuel is one of the most important obstacles. Therefore, the location of alternative fuel stations is an important topic in accelerating the entry of this fuel into the transportation system. Due to the lack of refueling stations, the assumption that all vehicles on intercity trips can travel all paths with only one alternative fuel is unrealistic. One of the practical ways is utilize of bi-fuel vehicles, to use gasoline in an emergency for avoid to stopping the vehicle on the journey by run out of alternative fuel. In this paper, we present a new model to location of alternative fuel station for bi-fuel vehicles. The model's goal is to minimize total emissions from vehicles. Also, we propose an efficient solution algorithm based on Benders decomposition to solve large network. The results show that the use of bi-fuel vehicles can lead to a significant reduce in greenhouse emissions. Moreover, implementation of proposed algorithm on randomly generated examples illustrate that the algorithm is useful in reducing the solving time and obtaining acceptable solution.