Abstract:

Fuel cost is the key element of ship owners to control operating costs in the business of voyage charter. While fuel price changes frequently over time and also ocean shipping transport cycle is long, and therefore how to develop the most economical refueling scheme among the ports of call becomes one of the significant issues that the ship owners concerning. This study addresses the refueling scheme optimization problem for voyage charter operators from the perspective of the ship owner. First, an ARMAbased model was proposed to forecast a time serials of the fuel prices. Then, to maximize the shipping operation profit, the nonlinear programming model is formulated to solve the optimal refueling scheme where to refuel and how much to refuel. Finally, a case study on a Pacific Oceancircle route under multicharter voyage contracts is conducted for a dry bulk cargo ship. The results indicate that the optimal fuel supply program compared with conventional refueling cost saves 263 400 USD, accounting for 14.3% of the total operating profit.

Key words: waterway transportation, refueling scheme optimization, fuel price prediction, autoregressive and moving average model (ARMA), voyage charter

摘要：

燃油成本是船东在经营航次租船业务中控制运营成本的关键要素，由于燃油价格随时间频繁波动，而海上运输周期长，因此船舶在挂靠港的燃油补给计划成为船东面对的重要决策问题.本文以不定期航次租船为背景，从船东的视角，研究船舶在连续航次租船运营中的燃油补给问题.首先，基于ARMA模型建立燃油价格预测模型；其次，以连续多航次收益最大为目标，以补给地点和补给量为决策变量，基于燃油价格预测建立优化燃油补给方案的非线性规划模型.最后，针对一个干散货船舶的环太平洋的连续租船航次实例进行计算.结果表明，求解模型获取的最优燃油补给方案比传统的加油方式能够节省成本26.34万USD，占营运总收益的14.3%.

关键词: 水路运输, 燃油补给方案优化, 燃油价格预测, ARMA模型, 航次租船