An integrated decision making approach for selecting a sustainable waste water treatment technology

Abstract

Growing global energy demand and the depletion of fossil fuels have highlighted the need for alternate and environmentally benign energy sources. The volume of untreated waste water being disposed of straight into fresh water is becoming a major concern. An integrated treatment method can address the problems of bio-energy generation and wastewater management as both processes can use wastewater as a substrate. Linear diophantine fuzzy sets help handle the uncertainty and difficulties that arise while deciding on an effective treatment technique. The use of control parameters makes these fuzzy sets unique and superior to other existing fuzzy sets. A modified strategy incorporating the Pivot pairwise relative criteria importance assessment and Interactive multi-criteria decision making methodologies is proposed for the linear diophantine fuzzy environment. The applicability and effectiveness of the developed model are established by choosing an appropriate wastewater treatment technology in the context of linear diophantine fuzzy sets. In addition, sensitivity analysis is used in this study to determine the stability of the developed framework. Further, comparison analysis is also addressed to assess the validity of the acquired results.

Keywords: Criteria evaluation (PIPRECIA); Decision making (TODIM); Linear diophantine fuzzy set; Microbial fuel cell; Wastewater treatment.