A hybrid mathematical modelling approach for energy generation from hazardous waste during the COVID-19 pandemic

Jaber Valizadeh; Mehri Aghdamigargari; Ali Jamali; Uwe Aickelin; Setare Mohammadi; Hadi Akbarzadeh Khorshidi; Ashkan Hafezalkotob

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.128157

A hybrid mathematical modelling approach for energy generation from hazardous waste during the COVID-19 pandemic

J Clean Prod. 2021 Sep 15:315:128157. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.128157. Epub 2021 Jul 5.

Authors

Jaber Valizadeh¹, Mehri Aghdamigargari², Ali Jamali³, Uwe Aickelin⁴, Setare Mohammadi⁵, Hadi Akbarzadeh Khorshidi⁴, Ashkan Hafezalkotob⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Management, Saveh Branch, Islamic Azad University, Saveh, Iran.
² Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Department, Nazarbayev University, Nursultan, Kazakhstan.
³ Environmental Engineering, School of Civil Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran.
⁴ School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne, VIC, 3010, Australia.
⁵ Department of Management, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA.
⁶ College of Industrial Engineering, South Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

The COVID-19 virus in a short time has caused a terrible crisis that has been spread around the world. This crisis has affected human life in several dimensions, one of which is a sharp increase in urban waste. This increase in waste volume during the pandemic, in addition to the intense increase in costs associated with the risks of virus contagion through infectious waste. In this study, a hybrid mathematical modelling approach including a Bi-level programming model for infectious waste management has been proposed. At the higher level of the model, government decisions regarding the total costs related to infectious waste must be minimized. At this level, the collected infectious waste is converted into energy, the revenue of which is returned to the system. The lower level relates to the risks of virus contagion through infectious waste, which can be catastrophic if ignored. This study has considered the low, medium, high and very high prevalence scenarios as key parameters for the production of waste. In addition, the uncertainty in citizens' demand for waste collection was also included in the proposed model. The results showed that by energy production from waste during the COVID-19 pandemic, 34% of the total cost of collecting and transporting waste can be compensated. Finally, this paper obtained useful managerial insights using the data of Kermanshah city as a real case.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; Energy; Hybrid mathematical modelling; Infectious waste.