Multi-Objective Optimization Model for the Sustainable Natural Gas Supply Chain

Sustainable supply chain has become an accurate part of the corporate strategy. In this research, a real case study of the natural gas supply chain has been investigated. Using concepts related to natural gas industry and the relations among the components of gas and oil wells, refineries, storage tanks, dispatching, transmission and distribution network, a seven-echelon supply chain has been offered and presented schematically. The aim of this paper is to optimize a case study using a multi-objective and multi-period model. A small-sized model was verified and solved using an improved augmented ε-constraint algorithm to generate Pareto optimal solutions and assessed trade-offs among objectives in order to help decision makers make an optimal decision. Sensitivity analysis was conducted on its parameters. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that presents a multi-objective optimization model for the sustainable natural gas supply chain.