Environmental performance evaluation of large-scale municipal solid waste incinerators using data envelopment analysis

    Authors

    H. W. Chen; N. B. Chang; J. C. Chen;S. J. Tsai

    Comments

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    Abbreviated Journal Title

    Waste Manage.

    Keywords

    MANAGEMENT-SYSTEM ANALYSIS; EFFICIENCY ANALYSIS; ENERGY EFFICIENCY; DEA; TAIWAN; BENCHMARKING; BUILDINGS; DESIGN; Engineering, Environmental; Environmental Sciences

    Abstract

    Limited to insufficient land resources, incinerators are considered in many countries such as Japan and Germany as the major technology for a waste management scheme capable of dealing with the increasing demand for municipal and industrial solid waste treatment in urban regions. The evaluation of these municipal incinerators in terms of secondary pollution potential, cost-effectiveness, and operational efficiency has become a new focus in the highly interdisciplinary area of production economics, systems analysis, and waste management. This paper aims to demonstrate the application of data envelopment analysis (DEA) - a production economics tool - to evaluate performance-based efficiencies of 19 large-scale municipal incinerators in Taiwan with different operational conditions. A 4-year operational data set from 2002 to 2005 was collected in support of DEA modeling using Monte Carlo simulation to outline the possibility distributions of operational efficiency of these incinerators. Uncertainty analysis using the Monte Carlo simulation provides a balance between simplifications of our analysis and the soundness of capturing the essential random features that complicate solid waste management systems. To cope with future challenges, efforts in the DEA modeling, systems analysis, and prediction of the performance of large-scale municipal solid waste incinerators under normal operation and special conditions were directed toward generating a compromised assessment procedure. Our research findings will eventually lead to the identification of the optimal management strategies for promoting the quality of solid waste incineration, not only in Taiwan, but also elsewhere in the world. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

    Journal Title

    Waste Management

    Volume

    30

    Issue/Number

    7

    Publication Date

    1-1-2010

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    1371

    Last Page

    1381

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000278682000030

    ISSN

    0956-053X

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