Optimal Location and Capacity of Pre-cooling Facilities Considering the First-Mile Loss of Fresh Agri-products
High loss rate has always been a pain point in the circulation of fresh agri-products.As the"First Mile"of cold chains,pre-cooling is the key to affecting the quality of fresh agri-products.In recent years,the construction of pre-cooling facilities in producing areas has been promoted in China.However,due to the dif-ficulty of constructing pre-cooling stations in traditional building forms in fields,centralized pre-cooling is mostly adopted in regions where conditions permit.However,centralized pre-cooling stations are generally far away from the producing area of agri-products.If their locations are not reasonable,the loss rate of fresh agri-products will remain high.Therefore,it is necessary to find the best location scheme of pre-cooling stations considering the"First Mile"loss of fresh agri-products,so as to effectively reduce the loss and logistics costs in the circulation of agri-products.Although little literature has considered the pre-cooling station location problem,only the number and location of pre-cooling stations are considered.However,the type and capacity of pre-cooling stations are not involved.Moreover,different pre-cooling methods for different types of fresh agri-products are not considered,and the"First Mile"loss from producing areas to pre-cooling stations is ignored.Economies of scale in the construction of pre-cooling stations are also not considered.In this paper,the loss of multi-type fresh agri-products after being picked in the logistics process of producing areas→pre-cooling facilities→logistics centers is considered,and corresponding pre-cooling facilities suitable for their pre-cooling needs is built.By considering the economies of scale in the construction and operations of various pre-cooling facilities,a mixed-integer linear programming model is developed to optimize the layout of pre-cooling facilities and determine the number,location,type,and capacity of pre-cooling facilities.A genetic algorithm is proposed to solve the model according to its characteristics.Finally,the effectiveness of the proposed model and algorithm are verified by numerical experiments and a case study on the optimal layout of pre-cooling facili-ties for fresh agri-products in Chengdu.The results show that the first-mile loss of fresh agri-products and the economies of scale in the construction of pre-cooling facilities will significantly affect the location of pre-cooling facilities.In practice,it is necessary to combine the characteristics of fresh agri-products and the technical and economic indicators of constructing pre-cooling facilities to optimize their locations.
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