Potential of Fuzzy-ELECTRE MCDM in Evaluation of Cyanobacterial Toxins Removal Methods

Abstract

Cyanobacteria blooms and toxins released from cyanobacteria, called cyanotoxins, have become a serious environmental issue because of their potential toxicity toward human health. Several conventional and advanced water treatment methods are available for degradation of cyanotoxins from surface water, but a cost-effective and efficient water treatment technique can greatly reduce the processing time and improve the quality of treated water. Selection of an optimum treatment technique for cyanotoxins degradation is a multi-criteria decision-making problem owing to the involvement of several conflicting criteria and constraints. In this paper, an integrated Fuzzy-ELECTRE model was proposed and its potential toward evaluation of different cyanotoxins removal techniques has been explored to select the most suitable technology. In this integrated model, criteria importance weights were determined by Fuzzy process, while the ranking of alternatives was performed using ELECTRE process. The result obtained from the model shows that ‘advanced oxidation by titanium dioxide \({({\rm TiO}_{2})}\)’ is the most suitable technology among all considered technology for the removal of cyanotoxins. The developed methodological approach was also used to rank the available treatment techniques within the main group of conventional and advanced oxidation methods (AOMs). The results clearly depict that ozonation and photocatalysis by \({{\rm TiO}_{2}}\) are the best methods within the group of conventional and AOMs, respectively. The ability of the proposed model for providing complete and clear ranking of all considered alternatives confirms its potential for evaluation of cyanotoxins removal methods.