Eco-technical and environmental evaluation of Electroplating industries wastewater treatment applying AHP

Subject Areas : environmental management

Mohammad Reza Dabaghian ¹ , Sayed Hossein Hashemi ²

1 - M.Sc. Student, Faculty of Environment & Civil Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology
2 - Assistant Professor, Environmental Science Research Institute, Shahid Beheshti University

Received: 2008-01-10 Accepted : 2008-02-12 Published : 2009-09-23

Keywords: Wastewater treatment, Heavy metal, electroplating, Analytical Hierarchy Process (,

Abstract :

In this research, a systematic approach for selecting the best alternative for the wastewater treatment of electroplating plants is introduced. AHP is one of the systematic approaches applied in complicated multi-criterion decision-making to obtain scientific and reasonable results. In this study, four wastewater treatment approaches (Chemical Precipitation, Reverse Osmosis, Ion Exchange, Nano Filtration) were evaluated and compared with one another based on three major parameters, that is, economic, technical and environment-social criteria, each of which including the dimensions of the required land, cost of construction and installation, repair and maintenance, sludge disposal cost, achievement of standards, etc. The results revealed that the Reverse Osmosis (RO) was the optimal choice for the wastewater treatment of electroplating plants