Integrated Assessment of Environmental and Economic Performance of Chemical Products Using Analytic Hierarchy Process Approach

With the increasing public consciousness on environmental issues, chemical products and process de-signs require simultaneous satisfaction and compromise of environmental and economical requirements. To fulfill the two conflicting while complementary objectives, a systematic approach for life cycle design of a chemical product is proposed in this article. Multiattribute decision-making is adopted in a trade-off consideration of both technical economical evaluation and environmental impacts assessment using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approach. On the basis of an evaluation of the relative importance of the criteria multicriteria decision making is performed. In this study, an AHP model is used to derive single a criteria score by analyzing the environmental im-pact and life cycle cost of a product, respectively. And a fluctuant weight analysis is put forth to calculate the inte-grated index of the product to enable products to be ranked or selected intuitionally and conveniently. The proposed AHP model has been applied to a case study, a comparative study on chamber cleaning with NF3 and C2F6. The re-sults show that the proposed AHP model is capable of providing a rational and relevant evaluation.