Abstract
Multiple criteria decision making is an effective approach that can be successfully used for revealing eco-innovative solutions in industrial wastewater treatment by prioritizing various promising technologies. Besides, eligible researches on emerging membrane processes viz., forward osmosis and membrane distillation are gaining widespread interest in scientific communities focused on reclamation, recovery and reuse of industrial wastewaters. In this study, the preferability of four innovative systems compared to a traditional system was hierarchically prioritized for environmentally benign treatment and utilization of dairy industry wastewater using the most common tool in multi-criteria decision making analysis, analytical hierarchy process. The analyses were attributed to the preferences classified with regard to the technical, economic and environmental aspects of the alternatives. Despite the existence of both greatest importance of energy consumption and higher energy requirements of novel solutions, major prominent features to be provided by real-scale applications of innovative systems were determined as more valuable multiple outcomes in environmental protection and economic profit. The sensitivity analysis to evaluate how the variations in the predefined weights of attributes influence the preference priorities indicated that the decision prioritization analysis on the novel technology selection was sufficiently sensitive to all the main evaluation criteria. This study proved that novel membrane technologies have more preferable features in dairy wastewater treatment by further whey utilization and waste minimization and more effective industrial water reuse, especially in case of waste heat usage in membrane distillation. Finally, sustainable dairy wastewater management in a more desirable manner than now could be accomplished by means of technically highly efficient, economically cost-effective and environmentally eco-innovative achievements.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 4605-4617 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Journal of Cleaner Production |
| Volume | 112 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2016 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Funding
Due to his many noteworthy contributions on science and technology, this paper was dedicated to Al−Jazari (1136−1206) who is known as the father of robotics. Authors thanks the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey , TUBITAK due to financial support provided for the experimental investigations and software simulations of techno-economical performances of whey treatment systems by a national project (no: 109Y300 ).
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| TUBITAK | 109Y300 |
| Türkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Araştirma Kurumu |
Keywords
- Dairy wastewater treatment
- Decision making analysis
- Eco-innovative treatment
- Environmental sustainability
- Novel technology selection
- Techno-economic viability
