Did we choose the best one? A new site selection approach based on exposure and uptake potential for waste incineration

Abstract

Ecological problems arising after the construction and operation of a waste incineration plant generally originate from incorrect decisions made during the selection of the location of the plant. The main objective of this study is to investigate how the selection method for the location of a new municipal waste incineration plant can be improved by using a dispersion modelling approach supported by geographical information systems and multi-criteria decision analysis. Considering this aim, the appropriateness of the current location of an existent plant was assessed by applying a pollution dispersion model. Using this procedure, the site ranking for a total of 90 candidate locations and the site of the existing incinerator were determined by a new location selection practice and the current place of the plant was evaluated by ANOVA and Tukey tests. This ranking, made without the use of modelling approaches, was re-evaluated based on the modelling of various variables, including the concentration of pollutants, population and population density, demography, temporality of meteorological data, pollutant type, risk formation type by CALPUFF and re-ranking the results. The findings clearly indicate the impropriety of the location of the current plant, as the pollution distribution model showed that its location was the fourth-worst choice among 91 possibilities. It was concluded that the location selection procedures for waste incinerators should benefit from the improvements obtained by the articulation of pollution dispersion studies combined with the population density data to obtain the most suitable location.

Landfill site selection in Makkah using geographic information system and analytical hierarchy process

“…With a diverse set of geographical data and an alternative series of evaluations, as set by the planner, a GIS aggregates the information into maps. GIS has been used in several countries to select the best landfill sites: Iraq, Italy, Turkey, USA, Iran, Palestine, and others (Baiocchi et al, 2014; Bosompem et al, 2016; Chabuk et al, 2016; El Baba et al, 2015; Jensen & Christensen, 1986; Motlagh & Sayadi, 2015; Onur Demirarslan et al, 2016).…”

Sustainable waste-to-energy plant site selection by a hybrid method of geographic information system and evidential reasoning: A case study Guilan province

“…Generally, MCDM can be categorized into two main branches, Multi Objective Decision Making (MODM) and Multi Attribute Decision Making (MADM) that are applied to continuous and discrete space problems respectively (Rezaei, 2015). Many environmental problems have been tackled using MCDM, for instance, waste management (Garfi et al, 2009;Nouri et al, 2018), landfill site selection (Karimi et al, 2019;Khoshand et al, 2018;Uyan, 2014), and incineration site selection (Demirarslan et al, 2016;Ekmekçioğlu et al, 2010;Ferretti and Pomarico, 2012;Hu et al, 2015).…”

Site Selection of Waste-to-Energy (WtE) Plant considering Public Satisfaction by an Extended VIKOR Method

“…And many unignorable factors of waste power generation project which may have an influence on surrounding residents [3], local environment, and even the operation and maintenance of WtE plant are not fully considered [4]. So, some projects need reevaluation or relocation due to inappropriate site selection methods [5].…”