Evaluation and Ranking of Waste to Energy Technologies Using Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Methods AHP-VIKOR , AHP -TOPSIS

The most important objective of this paper is to provide an appropriate model for selecting best waste-to-energy technology for both private and public sector managers and investors. Urban waste management combined with energy recovery can be the most suitable solution not only for preserving environment but also for producing and supplying energy to urban and rural communities. Determining the most appropriate waste-to-energy technology is a challenging and complex process, requiring consideration of a wide range of diverse criteria. For this purpose, this study tries to apply two of the most widely used Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) methods, TOPSIS and VIKOR. Anaerobic digestion (AD), incineration, and pyrolysis were chosen as the main options for waste-to-energy conversion technologies. These options were evaluated based on three main criteria: environmental, technical, and economic, each of which included various sub-criteria. The results of pairwise comparisons indicate that among main criteria, environmental criterion holds the highest score and importance, followed by the economic and technical criteria, respectively. To ensure reliability, the options were ranked using three different MCDM models methods Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), VIKOR, and TOPSIS. The overall results of the decision-making models show that incineration is the best waste-to-energy technology, followed by anaerobic digestion and pyrolysis in respective order.