Choosing the Phytoremediation Technologies for Cleaning Various Types of Wastewater

Abstract

A methodological approach has been devised for determining the priority phytoremediation technology for the treatment of wastewater from settlements, based on the hierarchy analysis method (MAI). The proposed approach makes it possible to involve experts from municipal authorities of a settlement to substantiate decisions on managing the environmental safety of surface water bodies adjacent to the selected settlements. The criteria (groups of factors) have been proposed, which reflected the input and output parameters of a treatment system, conditions at a construction site of treatment plants, and the requirements for phytoremediation technologies. Experts in various professional aspects gave their judgments regarding the priority of advantages of the mentioned criteria. The multidisciplinary experts’ judgments, which reflected the specific features of phytoremediation and the conditions for a would-be location of treatment plants, processed according to the scientifically based MAI procedure, formed the basis for decision-making on the choice of a priority phytoremediation technology under specific conditions. The advantages of the proposed methodological approach include a possibility to link the entire array of the necessary information to a single algorithm for substantiating a solution. The information differs both in its content (environmental, biological, urban planning, social and economic) and in the form of its representation (the data on direct measurements, statistical and forecast estimates). The proposed methodological approach has been tested based on an example of choosing the phytoremediation technologies for treatment plants at three different types of facilities such as an industrial enterprise, a residential building, and a city hospital. The obtained results demonstrated an acceptable level of conformity, which testifies to their reliability. The devised methodological approach is useful for making managerial decisions on the choice of technology for the phytoremediation at treatment plants in order to substantiate their improvement or to build new plants