Planning of LNG Filling Stations for Road Freight: A Case Study of Shenzhen

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) has the potential to save fuel cost and reduce air pollution compared to conventional diesel. In order to promote the development of LNG trucks in Shenzhen road freight industry, this paper aimed at forecasting the LNG filling demand and planning the stations construction. There are 6 sub-industries constituting Shenzhen road freight industry, which are port transportation, container transportation, dumper transportation, mixer truck transportation, dangerous cargo transportation and logistics transportation. Besides, three types of LNG filling stations with different applicability are discussed in this paper. Considering the variation of promotion targets during the next decade, the planning schedule was separated into 4 periods in which three types of stations have different priority of construction. Based on scenario analysis, we predicted the LNG trucks penetration and LNG filling demand of each sub-industry during each period. Then an optimization model was built to minimize the total costs and land areas of stations construction meeting the filling demand. As a result, the required number of LNG filling stations of each period can be calculated by solving the model. This paper contributed to the balance between demand and supply of LNG using in road freight of Shenzhen. In addition, the planning results can provide scientific evidences for government to make decisions. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.