TY - JOUR
T1 - Sludge Valorization Process for Waste-to-Value-Added Products: Process Simulation, Sustainability Assessment, and Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Decision Making
AU - Liu, Yue
AU - Shi, Tao
AU - Yang, Ao
AU - Ren, Jingzheng
AU - Shen, Weifeng
AU - He, Chang
AU - Toniolo, Sara
N1 - Funding Information:
The research was supported by the grant from the Research Committee of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University under student account codes RK2B and RK3P and was also financially supported by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council for Early Career Scheme (grant no. 25208118) and The Postdoctoral Fellowships Scheme (G-YW4Y). The draft of this paper was first presented in 2021 International Conference on Cleaner Production and Sustainability (CPS2021, hybrid event), December 12, 2021.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 American Chemical Society.
PY - 2022/8/29
Y1 - 2022/8/29
N2 - In this paper, a decision-making framework based on process simulation and the fuzzy PROMETHEE II method was proposed to evaluate the performances of the waste management alternatives considering the situation of lacking data and uncertainty. Process simulation and fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making methods were applied to deal with the problem of insufficient data and uncertain information from linguistic descriptions. First, a criteria system covering environmental, economic, technical, and social aspects was established for sustainability evaluation. Then, sustainability assessment was conducted based on the results of process simulation. The fuzzy best-worst method was applied to obtain the fuzzy weights for the criteria based on the preferences of stakeholders, and the fuzzy PROMETHEE II approach was presented to generate the ranking for all the alternatives. A case study for the prioritization of sludge-to-energy technologies was carried out to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed framework. Sensitivity analysis and uncertainty analysis were also conducted to verify the stability and robustness of the model. Results indicate the effectiveness of the proposed model on providing reference for the waste-to-energy alternatives ranking and giving constructive suggestions for the industry and future research directions. The constructed model can not only provide useful references for decision-makers but also can inspire researchers to investigate biomass management technologies in a similar framework, and the application may even extend to other fields.
AB - In this paper, a decision-making framework based on process simulation and the fuzzy PROMETHEE II method was proposed to evaluate the performances of the waste management alternatives considering the situation of lacking data and uncertainty. Process simulation and fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making methods were applied to deal with the problem of insufficient data and uncertain information from linguistic descriptions. First, a criteria system covering environmental, economic, technical, and social aspects was established for sustainability evaluation. Then, sustainability assessment was conducted based on the results of process simulation. The fuzzy best-worst method was applied to obtain the fuzzy weights for the criteria based on the preferences of stakeholders, and the fuzzy PROMETHEE II approach was presented to generate the ranking for all the alternatives. A case study for the prioritization of sludge-to-energy technologies was carried out to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed framework. Sensitivity analysis and uncertainty analysis were also conducted to verify the stability and robustness of the model. Results indicate the effectiveness of the proposed model on providing reference for the waste-to-energy alternatives ranking and giving constructive suggestions for the industry and future research directions. The constructed model can not only provide useful references for decision-makers but also can inspire researchers to investigate biomass management technologies in a similar framework, and the application may even extend to other fields.
KW - fuzzy BWM
KW - multi-criteria decision analysis
KW - sustainability assessment
KW - waste-to-wealth technology
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85136685897&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1021/acssuschemeng.2c03739
DO - 10.1021/acssuschemeng.2c03739
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85136685897
SN - 2168-0485
VL - 10
SP - 11428
EP - 11440
JO - ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering
JF - ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering
IS - 34
ER -