Performance evaluation of eco-industrial thermal power plants by using fuzzy GRA-VIKOR and combination weighting techniques

Abstract

More and more eco-industrial thermal power plants are established in China to promote the clean and sustainable production of coal resources. This paper presents an effective approach for evaluating performance of emerging eco-industrial plants in China. In general, performance evaluation is a complex multi-criteria decision-making problem, in which multiple requirements and fuzzy conditions have to be taken into consideration simultaneously. By combining concepts of the Vlsekriterijumska Optimizacijia I Kompromisno Resenje and grey relational analysis, a new fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making model is proposed to deal with the performance evaluation of eco-industrial thermal power plants. This model is solved by an effective algorithm, which incorporates the decision-maker's attitude on performance ratings of each criterion, and integrates the objective information as well as subjective opinions in criteria weights determination based on fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process and Shannon entropy. Finally, the applicability of proposed framework is demonstrated by an empirical study of eco-industrial thermal power plants in Shanxi province. The results show that A3 achieves the best performance, criteria affiliated with waste recycle and pollutant emission obtain much more attentions than that of other criteria. Moreover, the sensitivity analysis indicates the robustness and effectiveness of proposed model and evaluation results. The study innovates the weights determination and aggregating function for conventional fuzzy Vlsekriterijumska Optimizacijia I Kompromisno Resenje, which provides an effective means for performance evaluation of eco-industrial thermal power plants involving subjective assessments of qualitative attributes in a fuzzy environment.