关键词: 水路运输, VLCC航线优化, 节能航线, 不定期船

Abstract: As the global energy crisis intensifies, energy conservation and emission reduction have become important issues in the present era. Crude oil trade is crucial for the development of national economy, with shipping being the primary mode of transportation for crude oil. Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCC) have been widely used for the crude oil transportation. Due to the size of the vessels, VLCC are often affected by the weather conditions, particularly wind and waves. This paper developed two optimization models for VLCC energy-saving routes with the objective of minimizing total fuel consumption. The models consider limitations of meteorological environment, safety margins, time constraints, and obstacle avoidance. An improved ant colony algorithm is proposed to solve the models based on the principle of artificial potential fields. The computational experiments demonstrate that the proposed approach effectively reduces fuel consumption for the VLCC. By comparing the fuel consumption under different estimated arrival time, it was found that relaxing the estimated arrival time of vessels can effectively reduce fuel consumption. However, when the estimated arrival time was adjusted to a certain extent, the reduction in fuel consumption became minimal. Therefore, in actual operational processes, shipping companies need to consider the actual operations and balance vessel fuel consumption with estimated arrival time to achieve energy conservation and emission reduction goals.

Key words: water transportation, VLCC route optimization, energy-saving route, tramp ships