Collaborative elicitation to select a sustainable biogas desulfurization technique for landfills

Abstract

[EN] The 2015 Paris Agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change establishes three key ways for the reduction of the emissions of Greenhouse Effect Gases: mitigation, adaptation and resilience of ecosystems. In this context, one of the major goals for methane recovery from waste is the process of obtaining biogas from biomass or waste, a form of fuel with zero impact on the carbon footprint of the planet. All possible uses of biogas depend mainly on the degree of purification obtained. The removal of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is the main weakness in using biogas in industrial applications. If the use of biogas is intended for engines, turbines or to enrich the biogas to obtain natural gas, lowering the levels of H2S will be necessary, in order to avoid corrosion in gas lines and in engines. Biogas desulfurization can be achieved through different techniques: physical, chemical, biological or hybrid procedures. Selecting the most sustainable technique to clean biogas entails a complex problem, which involves the analysis of these desulfurization treatments under different criteria. In this paper, we present a novel collaborative elicitation to select the consensus procedure for the reduction of the concentration of H2S in biogases from landfills. The elicitation technique is based on fuzzy set theory and VIKOR method in order to handle intangible data and to avoid potential bias by the panelists. The proposed hybrid method guarantees traceability and transparency to achieve consensus among the panel of experts during the decision making procedure.