Application of multicriteria decision analysis to jar-test results for chemicals selection in the physical-chemical treatment of textile wastewater

Jar-test is a well-known tool for chemicals selection for physical-chemical wastewater treatment. Jar-test results show the treatment efficiency in terms of suspended matter and organic matter removal. However, in spite of having all these results, coagulant selection is not an easy task because one coagulant can remove efficiently the suspended solids but at the same time increase the conductivity or increase considerably the sludge production containing chemicals and toxic dyes. This makes the final selection of coagulants very dependent on the relative importance assigned to each measured parameter. In this paper, the use of multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) is proposed to help on the selection of the coagulant and its concentration in the physical-chemical wastewater treatment, since textile wastewater contains hazardous substances. Therefore, starting from the parameters fixed by the jar-test results, these techniques will allow to weight these parameters, according to the judgements of wastewater experts, and to establish priorities among coagulants. Two well-known MCDA techniques have been used: analytic hierarchic process (AHP) and preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluations (PROMETHEEs) and their results were compared. The method proposed has been applied to the particular case of textile wastewaters. The results obtained show that MCDA techniques are useful tools to select the chemicals for the physical-technical treatment. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.