Inter Terminal Transport System Design Using Conveyor Belts for the Port of Rotterdam

Abstract

Port of Rotterdam is one of the biggest port infrastructures in the world which plays an important role for Dutch economy. While these container flows are handled by the port’s facilities, some containers require second-tier container services (e.g. repair, custom clearance, storage) which usually they are not provided at all of the facilities in the port and normally the container that requires them are not located at the facility that services are provided. Under the circumstances these containers needs to be transported to the location that those services are provided and moved again to another location after they have received the service; this category of transport services is referred to as Inter Terminal Transport and the system that provides it is called Inter Terminal Transport System. Due to planned developments of the port in the following years, it is expected that Port of Rotterdam absorbs more container flows in the following years which decreases the quality and efficiency of the functional operations that take place to facilitate Inter Terminal Transport. In other words, using Multi-Trailer System for providing Inter Terminal Transport in Port of Rotterdam become more and more inefficient in the following years. One of the possible ways to improve the efficiency of the Inter Terminal Transport In Port of Rotterdam is to investigate the possibilities to use Belt conveyors for Inter Terminal Transport. Belt conveyors are one of the most applied equipment in transport industry and here are numerous transport systems that use conveyor belts for handling loads (e.g. industrial packages) that has similar characteristics to intermodal containers. This similarity in application makes them as an interesting alternative option to be used as Inter Terminal Transport System. On the other hand, conveyor belts consume considerably more amount of energy in comparison with other transportation system which can decrease their attractiveness dramatically. Under the circumstances, energy efficient conveyor belts seem to be an interesting option for Inter Terminal Transport System in Port of Rotterdam in following years. Considering the problem the main research question in this thesis is stated as follow: How to design a belt conveyor system to transport possible future demand of Inter terminal transport of containers in Maasvlakte area of the port of Rotterdam in an energy efficient way? In order to answer this question, the objective of this study is set to determine to what extent it is feasible to implement energy efficient belt conveyor system to transport possible future container demand of Inter Terminal Transport in port of Rotterdam. The available theory about Port of Rotterdam and belt conveyors is used to create a Inter Terminal Transport System which is referred to as ”ITT Belt Conveyor System”. This system use belt on roller conveyors and turn tables in the Maasvlakte area and it is capable of providing transport service for the maximum amount of container demand in 2030. In the design process, trial layered model is used to identify stakeholders and systems engineering methodology is used to define the necessary quality attributes that any suggested system for Inter Terminal Transport should have. Detailed information about the ITT Belt Conveyor system is determined using a system engineering process, in which a conceptual model is created about the system and a physical model discuss how the functions and behavior of the system can be realized. In addition, step by step simulation studies are conducted in the project to visualize if the components of the system behave as it is expected from and to determine how far the performance of the ITT Belt Conveyor System can be judged. Resulted from these methodologies, a network consisting of 11 layers of conveyor belts and turn tables are suggested in this project which contains 125 dedicated path between each origin and destination. After conducting simulation studies, it is illustrated that ITT Belt Conveyor System I able to fulfil the requirements. Under this circumstance, ITT Belt Conveyor System can operates in Port of Rotterdam in an energy efficient manner; although ITT Belt Conveyor System is able to satisfy all of the requirements, but its design is highly ambitious.