Multi-Depot Green Vehicle Routing Problem to Minimize Carbon Emissions

Weiheng Zhang, Yuvraj Gajpal, Srimantoorao. S. Appadoo and Qi Wei
Additional contact information
Weiheng Zhang: Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba, 181 Freedman Crescent, Winnipeg, MB R3T 5V4, Canada
Yuvraj Gajpal: Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba, 181 Freedman Crescent, Winnipeg, MB R3T 5V4, Canada
Srimantoorao. S. Appadoo: Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba, 181 Freedman Crescent, Winnipeg, MB R3T 5V4, Canada
Qi Wei: School of Business Administration, Guangdong University of Finance & Economics, 21 Luntou Road, Guangzhou 510320, China

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 8, 1-19

Abstract: A Multi-Depot Green Vehicle Routing Problem (MDGVRP) is considered in this paper. In MDGVRP, Alternative Fuel-powered Vehicles (AFVs) start from different depots, serve customers, and, at the end, return to the original depots. The limited fuel tank capacity of AFVs forces them to visit Alternative Fuel Stations (AFS) for refueling. The objective is to minimize the total carbon emissions. A Two-stage Ant Colony System (TSACS) is proposed to find a feasible and acceptable solution for this NP-hard (Non-deterministic polynomial-time) optimization problem. The distinct characteristic of the proposed TSACS is the use of two distinct types of ants for two different purposes. The first type of ant is used to assign customers to depots, while the second type of ant is used to find the routes. The solution for the MDGVRP is useful and beneficial for companies that employ AFVs to deal with the various inconveniences brought by the limited number of AFSs. The numerical experiments confirm the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms in this research.

Keywords: vehicle routing problem; alternative fuel-powered vehicles; alternative fuel station; ant colony (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/8/3500/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/8/3500/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:8:p:3500-:d:350151

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().