Comparative analysis on washability indices of anthracite coal by using MCDM methods

This paper presents the results of the Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) methods for determining the optimal separation density in the gravity separation of anthracite coal, and also suggests an appropriate MCDM model for this purpose. Five separation densities were selected as the output and seven coal washability indices were used as the input based on the washability results of coal. The SAW, TOPSIS, WASPAS, WISP, and CoCoSo methods were used in this study. The evaluation indices of the five methods were averaged as a new index. Finally, alternative A4 (i.e., the optimal separation density is 1650 kg/m3) was selected as the final separation density.