Location of fueling stations and routing of zero‐emission well‐boats in the Norwegian aquaculture industry

Abstract We study the problem of locating hydrogen fueling stations for zero‐emission aquaculture vessels in Norway and model the problem as a location‐routing problem, considering both the location of hydrogen fueling stations and the routing of aquaculture vessels. The problem is formulated as an open route model with energy constraints accounting for limited vessel range. The model determines the optimal locations for fueling stations and selects the optimal routes to be sailed such that the total costs of satisfying demand are minimized. The total costs consist of both investment costs in fueling stations and fuel costs incurred by the aquaculture vessels. We compare the computational results for an arc‐flow formulation and a path‐flow formulation with a priori route generation. The results show that the path‐flow formulation outperforms the arc‐flow formulation. However, the performance of the path‐flow formulation is highly affected by the vessel range since a longer range results in a higher number of generated routes and higher run times. A sensitivity analysis on the impact of vessel range reveals that a larger vessel range leads to a lower number of opened fueling stations and also a lower number of deployed vessels. We also include a post‐processing matheuristic to reduce the number of deployed vessels needed to meet the demand.