Wastewater treatment technology selection using a hybrid multicriteria decision‐making method

Abstract

Various technological methods are available for industrial wastewater treatment (WWT), ranging from conventional to advanced treatment processes. It is therefore a complex exercise to select the most appropriate technology to treat the industrial wastewater in a particular situation. Many criteria can be considered in the decision-making process; therefore, multicriteria decision-making methods are especially appropriate for solving this problem. In this paper, we aim to select the most appropriate municipal WWT technology for agricultural usages. We propose a new hybrid methodology based on the best-worst method (BWM) and the behavioral technique for order of preference by similarity to the ideal solution (BTOPSIS). This new hybrid takes advantage of the benefits of both methods. The BWM incorporates consistency checks, while the BTOPSIS can model the risk behavior of the decision maker. Using the proposed methodology, we calculate the performance of seven WWT technologies using criteria categorized into sustainability dimensions (i.e., economic, social, and environmental). The results, based on different levels of decision makers' loss aversion, indicate that energy consumption and an integrated fixed-film activated sludge reactor are the most effective criterion and technology, respectively. The proposed new methodology is generic and can be employed for any multicriteria decision problems.

Methods of Multi-Criteria Analysis in Technology Selection and Technology Assessment: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Waste management technology assessment and/or selection is another identified subarea. A substantial part of the studies concerns wastewater treatment technology selection (Ilangkumaran et al, 2013;Fetanat et al, 2021;Aydiner et al, 2016;Sadr et al, 2013;Meerholz & Brent, 2013;Salamirad et al, 2021 ) with the use of MCA methods. Some authors address problems of waste disposal technology selection (Jiang et al, 2015;Govind Kharat et al, 2019), biowaste treatment technology (Mpanang' ombe et al, 2018) or food waste technology (Chadderton et al, 2017).…”

Research on entropy weight multiple criteria decision‐making evaluation of metro network vulnerability

“…The improvement of TOPSIS can produce better evaluation results. It has been applied in sewage treatment method selection and language uncertainty analysis (Fayek and Omar, 2016; Salamirad et al., 2023). The multiple criteria decision‐making method is seldom used in the field of transportation network vulnerability analysis.…”

A multicriteria model to support the selection of inspection service providers based on the delay time model

“…With a view to extending the life of the component and preventing the occurrence of failures, an inspection service provider must be chosen to inspect the valve so as to prevent, discover, and correct unwanted situations. Using multicriteria decision methods to support provider selection is present in several segments all of which face common problems and these include health industry (Stević et al, 2020), construction industry (Santos et al, 2020), sustainable supply chain management (Schramm et al, 2020), logistics service (Wang et al, 2018), wastewater treatment technology (Salamirad et al, 2023), and technology (Amirghodsi et al, 2020). As we do in this paper, Amirghodsi et al ( 2020) seek to solve selection problems with a method that presents the ranking of alternatives as to the solution.…”