Research on joint distribution of sinter and pellet in iron and steel enterprise based on transportation problem

An iron and steel enterprise needs to distribute sinter and pellet from different sintering workshops and pelletizing workshops to multiple blast furnaces. The iron content in sinter and pellet can substitute for one another. However, as the iron grades of sinter that each sintering workshop produces are different, the amount and the iron grades that the blast furnace receives are different. So is the pellet, and both of them are coupling. This paper solves the joint relation of distributions between them, and reduces the cost of production of blast furnaces. Taking cost minimization as the objective function and taking interval numbers as the constraint, a mathematical model is established in this paper. The optimizing that joint distribution brings to the production cost of blast furnace is reflected by setting the shadow prices of sinter and pellet. Finally, an example illustrates the application of the proposed methodology.