Sustainable development of sewage sludge-to-energy in China: Barriers identification and technologies prioritization

Jingzheng Ren, Hanwei Liang, Liang Dong, Zhiqiu Gao, Chang He, Ming Pan and Lu Sun

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2017, vol. 67, issue C, 384-396

Abstract: In order to promote the sustainable development of sludge-to-energy industry and help the decision-makers/stakeholders to select the most sustainable technology for achieving the sludge-to-energy target, this study aims at using grey Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) to identify the critical barriers that hinder the sustainable development of sludge-to-energy industry in China and to investigate the cause-effect relationships among these barriers. Accordingly, some policy implications for promoting the sustainable development of sludge-to-energy industry in China were proposed. After the grey DEMATEL analysis, a grey Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) framework which allows multiple decision-makers/stakeholders to use linguistic terms to participate in the decision-making for prioritizing the alternative technologies for sludge-to-energy was developed, and the evaluation criterion system for sustainability assessment of sludge-to-energy technologies was determined based on the results of grey DEMATEL analysis. Three alternative technologies for sludge-to-electricity were studied by the proposed MCDM method, and the results show that the proposed grey MCDM method is feasible for group decision-making and sustainability assessment of the alternative technologies for sludge-to-energy.

Keywords: Decision making trial and evaluation laboratory; Multi-criteria decision making; Sludge; Energy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2016.09.024

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