Utilizing AHP-TOPSIS as Multi-Criteria Decision Approaches to Select the Best Alternative for Waste to Energy Technology

The main purpose of this study is to provide the decision makers in Jordan with a methodology to choose the most competitive waste to energy technology. The study used a Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) procedure of both Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) alone using Expert Choice software and the combination of AHP and the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (AHP-TOPSIS). The integration between the AHP and the TOPSIS is the main contribution of this research. Four waste to energy options were evaluated using three main criteria: environmental, technical, and socioeconomic; with three sub-criteria under each main criterion. Results showed that the environmental criterion is the most important one among the three considered criteria; weight of this criterion is approximately 69.9%, followed by technical criterion, which take 20.8% as weight, and the socioeconomic criterion ranked least important with a weight of 9.3%. Additionally, landfill gas option is found as the first and most preferable waste to energy option with a global priority of 0.561 followed by anaerobic digestion with a weight of 0.296, while incineration and pyrolysis technologies ranked the least preferred options with priorities of 0.087 and 0.056, respectively. (c) 2022 Jordan Journal of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. All rights reserved