Polygeneration system and sustainability: Multi-attribute decision-support framework for comprehensive assessment under uncertainties

Abstract As an important energy-efficient production technology, polygeneration has attracted more and more attentions for its advantages of high energy efficiency, low production cost, and fewer emissions compared with the traditional industrial systems. The objective of this study is to develop a multi-attribute comprehensive assessment method for sustainability assessment of polygenerations under uncertainty conditions. Fuzzy best-worst network method which can incorporate the interdependences and interactions among the evaluation criteria has been developed for determining the weights of the criteria. Interval TOPSIS which can rank the alternative under uncertainties has been employed to rank the alternative polygeneration systems according to their sustainability performance. In order to illustrate the proposed method, an illustrative case including four industrial systems has been studied, and the results were also validated by interval grey relational analysis (GRA) method. Sensitivity analysis was also carried out to investigate the effects of the weights of the criteria on the sustainability ranking of the four polygeneration systems.