Optimization of wastewater treatment alternative selection by hierarchy grey relational analysis [An article from: Journal of Environmental Management]

This digital document is a journal article from Journal of Environmental Management, published by Elsevier in 2007. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
This paper describes an innovative systematic approach, namely hierarchy grey relational analysis for optimal selection of wastewater treatment alternatives, based on the application of analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and grey relational analysis (GRA). It can be applied for complicated multicriteria decision-making to obtain scientific and reasonable results. The effectiveness of this approach was verified through a real case study. Four wastewater treatment alternatives (A^2/O, triple oxidation ditch, anaerobic single oxidation ditch and SBR) were evaluated and compared against multiple economic, technical and administrative performance criteria, including capital cost, operation and maintenance (O&M) cost, land area, removal of nitrogenous and phosphorous pollutants, sludge disposal effect, stability of plant operation, maturity of technology and professional skills required for O&M. The result illustrated that the anaerobic single oxidation ditch was the optimal scheme and would obtain the maximum general benefits for the wastewater treatment plant to be constructed.